


let's start right now

by dramaturgicallycorrect



Series: all my favorite conversations [15]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Road Trips, perfect au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 21:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10522005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect
Summary: He turns to Harry. “Do you mind, like. Can I take a picture of your driver’s license?”“Yeah,” Harry says easily, fishing his wallet out and presenting him with a California license to match his California plates. He has got an LA address, Niall notes as he snaps a picture. He’s got longer hair in this picture, waving down to brush his shoulders, a far sight from the short crop he's got now. It looks just as good on him, he notes almost subconsciously.He texts the picture to Louis as Harry puts the license away,give this to the police if I go missing ..What have you done Neil??comes Louis’ answer quickly, but Niall ignores it, looks up to find Harry looking back at him.“It’ll be fun.”“Promise?”Harry tilts his head. “I never make promises. You’ll just have to trust me.”[Or Harry's a professional cross country road trip driver, and Niall is his latest fare.]





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outwardbound93](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/gifts).



> for my dearest darling sav, please take this fic as a small and inadequate token of my love and appreciation.
> 
> unquestionable, innumerable thanks to sabrina, fina, jessi, anyone who's listened to me shout about this fic.

**Before.**

Niall almost doesn’t think it’s real, but he’s got a website and everything, at least forty testimonials on and off the site. One of them says, _Harry will change your life_ , and that’s what has Niall clicking on the _Contact Me!_ link. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with what Louis’d said -- _yeah, I heard of him, heard he’s fucking weird but it’s a good time._

It’s absurd, is what it is, he thinks as he’s typing out his name and email address and phone number. It’s got to be absurdly priced, being personally chauffeured across the country by a professional road tripper, but he’ll kick himself if he doesn’t at least look at it. He types carefully into the “Why Me?” box: _I don’t want a trip, I want an experience._

It’s why he’d come to America in the first place. You could go anywhere, honestly, to get an _experience_ , but London felt too close to home, everyone gap years in Europe. It was either America or somewhere in the middle of Asia he couldn’t pronounce, and Adam had called with the invitation first.

Turns out America so far hasn’t been much of an experience, because you can’t really count being regularly shouted at by rich old people much of an experience.

Everything was meant to change, but a lot of it just stayed stagnant -- Niall has the same old guitar, the same old budget, the same old clothes, the same old haircut, the same old life, just somewhere else. So he let the blond grow out of his hair, sold half his clothing and his guitar for a used Gibson he couldn’t really afford, quit his job, and decided to bugger off to Los Angeles.

Niall clicks back to the homepage, aimlessly around the website, like he’s not spent the last two hours on it gathering the courage he needs to actually do the thing. He should just grab a plane and be there in a day, instead of driving clear across the country with an absolute stranger.

There isn’t a single picture of Harry’s actual face on the whole site, just pictures of places he’d been, people he’d met. The feed from the _#harrydrivesinstyle_ tag on Instagram has the odd photo of who he suspects is Harry, but he’s always got a camera covering his face. It’s the same hands, long fingers wrapped around this massive professional looking thing, the hint of tattoos on his hands, running up his arms.

“Who are you, Harry Styles,” Niall mutters before his phone starts ringing. He doesn’t recognize the number, but the timing is too suspicious to reject the call. Nobody has his American number.

“Hello, is this Niall Horan?” says the voice on the other end, pitched low like he’s maybe telling a secret. He says Niall’s name correctly.

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Niall, this is Harry Styles. I got your message through my website.”

Oh. Shit. _Shit._  He’s called, he’s _real_. And he’s English, Niall thinks with surprise, so his mouth says, “You’re English” instead of _hello_.

“Yes.” Harry pauses. “Is that, like, a problem? I can try another accent, but this one sounds the best, if I’m going to be honest.”

“No, it’s fine, sorry. I just figured you were American. Because like. We’re in America, I guess.” Niall buries his head in his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m getting weirdly nervous. Can we start over?”

“Yes,” Harry says lightly, then hangs up on him.

Niall stares at his phone for ten long seconds before it rings again. When he answers, Harry says, “Hello, is this Niall Horan?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Niall, this is Harry Styles. I got your message through my website.” He keeps talking that same deliberate way, so Niall figures that's just what he sounds like.

“You’re English.”

Harry laughs, this honking thing loud enough that it has Niall tilt the phone away from his ear until he peters out. It wasn’t even that funny, honestly, but Niall leans back on his bed and laughs a little up at the ceiling, charmed nonetheless.

“I don’t remember what I said next,” Harry laments.

“It’s okay, suppose we should -- I dunno, talk business?”

“Ah, yes,” Harry says, then clears his throat. “So, Niall Horan. What’s bringing you to LA?”

He was asked that a lot, back when he used to tell people where he was headed. Back before enough of their eyes dimmed, and he’d get a pitying _sounds like fun_ and a _well, good luck with that_. And Niall doesn’t want to know if it’s because people don’t think it’s possible at all, or if people just don’t think it’s possible for _Niall_.

“What’s bringing anyone to LA?”

Harry makes a hum of concession before he says, “Fair enough.”

When Niall thinks on it, his response does seem a little abrupt, for an innocent enough question. “I’m a singer. Sometimes. Think I’d like to give it a proper go.”

“A singer,” Harry says like he’s excited. “So you’d like to busk your way across America, maybe?”

“That’s cool, yeah. I used to do some of that, back home. Never quite matched the rush of having a gig, though, 'cos like, busking you feel like you’re just playing your music out there to the unforgiving world, and the only thing that comes back is silence. Or like, traffic. Mostly people who wish you’d just shut the hell up. But there’s gigs and all, especially the good ones.”

Niall closes his eyes, and he sees it instantly, the dim lighting, the single spotlight, the stool placed in front of the microphone that’s a bit too tall for him, another band’s set up behind him, waiting to take the stage once he and his guitar surrender it. There’s nothing quite like it.

“Where you’ve giving it and they’re giving it back, feeding each other,” Niall says, words rolling off his tongue easy as second nature. “You’re all in the same place, feeling the same thing, moving together, and it’s just the music and maybe a pint. You make that connection you don’t get to make blending into the pavement. Plus no one’s accidentally spilling their Starbucks all over you while you’re trying to work your way through Fleetwood’s greatest hits.”

Harry laughs, breaking whatever spell had overcome Niall, had him talking for a million years about utter nonsense.

Niall opens his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’ve lost the plot.”

“No, this is good,” Harry says in his syrupy smooth way, “good information. Better than the boring stuff.”

“What’s the boring stuff?”

“Do you have any known allergies, medical conditions, or phobias I should plan around to keep your trip as safe as I can?”

“Yeah. Sounds boring,” Niall agrees, uncertain if he should answer it just yet, as Harry hasn’t actually said they’re going to do the thing.

“Have you got any questions for me?” Harry asks, but then he keeps talking like maybe he’s not ready for an answer yet. “It’s sort of weird, like, I do know that, I get told that a lot. I’ve got the website and all, and that’s good, but I know people still sort of get nervous. I’ll answer whatever you’d like, do pretty much anything to make you feel comfortable traveling with me. One time, someone said they wanted to talk to my mum and I had to draw the line there, unfortunately, but pretty much anything else.”

Then Harry leaves an expectant silence between them where Niall has to scramble to digest all of that and formulate a response. “Yeah, just, uh. I dunno. Why do you do it?”

“Well, I like the experience. It’s never the same, not when you’ve got someone different in the passenger seat each time. It’s like, travel’s stressful for some people, y’know. Planning everything, getting it all right, making sure everyone’s having a good time. So I like to help, I guess, like figure it out for people. There are some people who want to feel as far away from home as they can, and there are some people who like to feel like they’re at home everywhere they go. I know a bit about both, so I can do either.”

Niall thinks that doesn’t exactly explain why Harry does it, mostly why other people contact Harry. But there is something about it that makes him feel okay with it. “Which one will you do for me?”

Harry’s quiet for a while, and if it weren’t for the sound of his steady breathing on the other end, he’d have though Harry’s rung off. It has Niall chewing nervously on his finger, like maybe the whole thing hinges on Harry’s answer to this question. To see if he gets it.

“I think you want a home everywhere you go.”

Harry gets it. He gets it so immediately, Niall wonders exactly how much he’s given away, in just these ten minutes.

“How much would you like to pay me?”

Niall raises his eyebrows, pulling his thumb out of the way to say, “What?”

“Like, what’s your budget?”

“I dunno, like 400 for the whole trip, really.” He’s got half of it in tips bundled and strapped neatly in a box under this bed, leaving it out of his new American bank account specifically so he can’t spend it.

“I can work with that. We split motel rooms, gas, and food, and how about whatever’s left is the fee.”

“Are you -- seriously?” Niall tries to work out the maths, he’s relatively certain there won’t be much, if any, of a fee once they’re done with the trip.

“I am seriously.”

Niall scowls, even though Harry can’t see it. “You know what I meant.”

“Yes, Niall. Those are my rates.”

He licks his lips, keeping in the indignant huff he knows wants to pass his lips. “You’re not, like. Pitying me.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Harry says quietly.

Niall knows better than to ask, he should take the cheap rate and run with it. And pray if it all goes wrong, he's got enough to catch a bus or a train.

He feels less worried now he's talked to Harry, approaching the excited end of the anxiety scale. He’s going to LA. He’s really doing it. And if he’s lucky, he’ll collect a song or two on the way.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Harry sounds pleased. “Do you have any known allergies, medical conditions, or phobias I should plan around to keep your trip as safe as I can?”

“Um. No allergies. Got a bit of dodgy knee, so I just have to take it sort of easy walking long distances? And, um. Not good with tight spaces, like. Claustrophobia, I guess.” He leaves the _not great on airplanes_ unsaid, but it’s reason enough for looking into alternate methods of transportation. You can’t exactly stop off and get out of an airplane along the way, if it gets to be… too much. “Cars are fine though. Promise.”

“Thank you.” He pauses, Niall can hear some clicking, a stray bit of typing before he’s back. “I’ve just taken someone down to Miami, gonna do a bit of Christmas at the beach, then I can be up in your neck of the woods on Wednesday the 28th.”

Niall chokes on nothing, a breath, a thought. “Wednesday, okay.”

“Is that too soon?”

“No. It’s. Perfect. Yeah, let’s do Wednesday.” He clears his throat and flips the phone on speaker to open the calendar app. He pauses, his finger hovering over the app as a thought occurs to him. “Could I ask. D’you get a lot of requests?”

“A few, yeah.” He says it like he actually means quite a lot but doesn’t want to admit it, this sort of _keep it cool_ tone.

“Why’d you pick me?”

“I like you, Niall,” he answers promptly. Not even a second to think of an answer.

Niall can’t think of anything to say to that. Plenty of people like him, it’s what keeps him busy at the course, what got him this far in life. Somehow it feels weirdly different when Harry says it.

“Do you like me too?” Harry prompts.

“I -- yeah -- ” Niall stumbles, thinking it’s a little odd to force someone to reciprocate, even if he does quite like Harry already too, but then Harry laughs.

“I’m joking. I’ll see you Wednesday, yeah? I’ll send you an email with the particulars.”

“Yeah. Thanks, yeah.”

He’s still staring at his phone minutes after they ring off, wondering what the hell he’s gotten himself into.

\--

 

**Day 1.**

Harry Styles is gorgeous. That’s who Niall assumes is the tall drink of water leaned against a shitty old station wagon waiting outside his flat. He’s never actually quite understood that phrase before, a tall drink of water, not until he’s seen Harry Styles in the flesh.

He’s got a shirt on, mostly unbuttoned, that could either have cost him five bucks at a charity shop or 5,000 from some designer’s line, and long long legs, and boots that look like they’ve seen better days. But it’s when he slides the giant sunglasses up off his tanned face and into his hair that Niall actually stops in his tracks. Gorgeous.

Niall blinks, then shuffles forward to greet Harry when Harry picks himself up off his car. “Hi, I’m Niall.”

“You’re Irish,” Harry says with an easy grin.

“Very funny.”

“Yes, I am. Can I take your bag?” Harry reaches around him to grab the handle of his rolling case before Niall gives him permission, maneuvering it expertly around to the boot. Niall follows him dumbly, because it seems a bit odd to get into the car before Harry’s gotten into the car.

He’s got California plates. Niall wonders if maybe he’s going home.

Niall shoves in his hold all for the trip’s clothes next to his case, which is wedged in next to a couple of bags of Harry’s. Then it seems to be their whole lives in the one car. It feels too little, but it also feels too liberating.

“Guitar can go in the back seat, if you’d like?”

“Yeah.”

“You could play us a song or two on the road.”

Niall hesitates, but Harry’s closing the boot, so he doesn’t seem to notice. It’s been… a while, honestly, not since Mullingar that anyone but Adam’s heard him play. There’s not a whole lot going on in Augusta in the way of gigs. So it’s been a while.

He lays his guitar case carefully in the back seat, and once he’s sitting in the passenger seat, it hits him again, that sort of _what the fuck am I doing_ chant creeping back in. Harry seems like a nice enough lad, plus there was that Buzzfeed article about him, the forty-odd reviews.

He turns to Harry. “Do you mind, like. Can I take a picture of your driver’s license?”

“Yeah,” Harry says easily, fishing his wallet out and presenting him with a California license to match his California plates. He has got an LA address, Niall notes as he snaps a picture. He’s got longer hair in this picture, waving down to brush his shoulders, a far sight from the short crop he's got now. It looks just as good on him, he notes almost subconsciously.

He texts the picture to Louis as Harry puts the license away, _give this to the police if I go missing .._

 _What have you done Neil??_ comes Louis’ answer quickly, but Niall ignores it, looks up to find Harry looking back at him.

“It’ll be fun.”

“Promise?”

Harry tilts his head. “I never make promises. You’ll just have to trust me.”

He says it like it’s just that easy, then goes about yanking at his seatbelt. He waits to turn the car on until Niall’s got his seatbelt situated, then they’re off.

“You ready to fulfill your duties as passenger?”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

He remembers the list of rules Harry’d sent him. The passenger chooses the music. The passenger is to keep the driver entertained (within reason, road safety first and foremost) when the driver is not providing the entertainment. The passenger does not sleep while the driver drives. Not exactly unreasonable demands.

He puts his whole music app on shuffle, figuring they'll get through it all eventually, since he's not got enough data to stream anything the whole way.

Harry’s smiling, something approaching smugness twisting his lips.

“What?”

Harry shrugs a shoulder. “Not what I expected.”

“I love Katy Perry.”

“And she loves you.”

“Damn right she does.” He turns and looks out the window, biting down a little _if you don’t like the music, don’t ask me to pick it._

Music’s music’s music, for Niall. It doesn’t much matter what it is or what it sounds like, so long as it makes you feel something. If all it does is make you feel good, make you feel happy, make you feel alive -- then it’s good music. Simple as that.

They pass hundreds of anonymous buildings before the view outside Niall’s window becomes trees. He’s not doing much in the Entertain Harry department, but he figures they’re fine. Niall’s tapping his fingers on his thighs, Harry’s tapping his fingers on the wheel. They haven’t quite reached the point where either of them will sing along, though Harry hums when he knows one.

It’s a different thing, to be a singer out with people and sing. There’s some sort of weird pressure to be good, to give it a proper go instead of being ridiculous, reaching for harmonies that aren’t there just to see if you could.

Once they’ve cleared the other side of Atlanta, Harry breaks the companionable silence, which is fair enough, because Niall was thinking of doing the same.

“Have you got somewhere to stay in LA?”

“Yeah, my mate Louis, he lives there. He’s got this girl, she’s an actress. Like a proper one, not like a waitress or anything.”

“Good,” Harry says, and maybe it’s his approval. Not that Niall needed it. But it feels good to have it. Weirdly.

“Where’s home for you, if it’s not England? Is it LA?”

Harry chews on that one a while before he says, “I guess I don’t have one.”

That kind of hurts Niall, the fact that Harry doesn’t think he has one at all, not even where he came from.

Augusta had never felt like a home, not in the way Mullingar did. But he knew he wouldn’t put roots down in Augusta, he knew he’d move on. He’s still at the point where he’d call Mullingar home if anyone asked, but he’d like that answer to become LA.

“This car is my home.” Harry reaches out a hand to smooth over a bit of the dash. Seems like it’s meant to be taken as a joke, but Niall doesn’t think it’s very funny.

He goes to ask another question, but then Harry turns one on him first, then another, then another, anything to keep Niall talking. Maybe so Niall doesn’t ask any questions himself.

It goes on like that for hours, Niall feeling like he’s giving an entire account of his life until this point -- from his parents’ divorce to his worst class in grade school to the day he fucked up his knee to how caddying (but mostly waiting tables, not a proper caddy) at the Augusta National Golf Course has caused the sport to sort of lose its shine.

Harry goes quiet when Niall’s talking, tilts his head like he’s cataloging away details for future use. Niall can’t imagine why.

\--

“Where’re we headed?” Niall asks, somewhere around the fourth hour, as they make their way back into the car after lunch at a place called Cracker Barrel -- the single most American place Niall’s been in the year he’s lived here.

Harry stops in his tracks. “You didn’t read the itinerary?”

Niall chews on the edge of his thumb. “I glanced at it.”

“Niall.”

“What? It’s all the same to me, really, America is America. You know the big ones, otherwise the rest are just like. Spots on a map.”

In reality, he’s been the exact opposite in his life. Deliberate every step of the way, planning family vacations as best he could, down to the hour, so they don’t miss a thing. But he’d gotten the itinerary and panicked. It’d been exhausting, switching between excited and panicked back and forth, whenever he’d thought about what he was going to do, so he just stopped thinking about it.

It’s nice, sort of, so far. To take your hands off the wheel, as it were, and let someone else do all the driving. Let someone else worry that he’s having a good time. Let someone else take the blame if it all goes tits up.

“We’re going to Memphis today,” Harry says as he slides in the car, waits for Niall to slide in next to him.

Niall throws a quick glance at the back seat to check his guitar’s still there before he buckles his seatbelt. “That’s like country music, right?”

“Some. That’s mostly Nashville. Memphis, arguably, is the birthplace of rock and roll. Home of Sun Studio, where some of the greats recorded. Elvis recorded there, on his own, with the Million Dollar Quartet -- ”

“Are you being paid by the Memphis tourism board?”

“Two dollars per glowing recommendation.” Harry grins over at him for just a moment as he reverses the car to pull back out into the highway. “Then we’ve got Austin, that’s in Texas, excellent food. I met this drag queen there once, she owns her own burlesque club, and I’ve never taken recommendations from anyone but her. Then up to Albuquerque, which I haven’t been to before, but I’ve got a lot of good input from this Park Ranger I met in Nevada -- ”

“Sorry, what was that last one? Our last stop?”

“Albuquerque,” he says once before he very carefully spells it out letter by letter. Niall’s certain it’s got three q’s on its own.

“You’re shitting me, that’s not a real place.”

“No, it is, genuinely.”

“Albuquerque,” Niall tries, but it comes out sounding absurd. He’s a little embarrassed, trying to get his mouth around the vowels.

Harry doesn’t laugh at him, just glances over and says, “It’s a native word. Maybe I’m saying it wrong. We’ll get someone there to teach us, yeah?”

Niall nods, just so he doesn’t feel like shivering and the gentleness of Harry’s tone, the furrow in his brow that makes it look like he’s questioning everything.

“Then there’s Flagstaff if we need to,” Harry continues, “depending on how much time you want to spend around the Grand Canyon. Bringing it home to LA. Five days in total.”

“That’s a hell of a plan.”

“Thank you, I worked very hard on it,” Harry says primly, which sends Niall chuckling, wanting to know what else Harry’s worked very hard on.

“What’s the weirdest place you’ve been?”

Harry thinks on it for a moment, squinting at the road like a map of America is folding out ahead of him and he’s plotting his previous courses. “I went to a place called Accident, Maryland once.”

“On purpose?”

Harry gives a little sardonic laugh. “Had a couple of passengers who wanted to see a bunch of oddly named towns in America.”

“How was it, Accident, Maryland?”

“I’ve got this theory that everything in Accident, Maryland happens on accident.”

“I’ve accidentally worked at the post office for twenty years,” Niall muses.

Harry widens his eyes over at Niall briefly before turning them back to the road. “Oh, dear, we’ve accidentally gotten married.”

“We’ve accidentally spent our whole lives together.”

“A happy accident,” Harry hums.

This is a happy accident, Niall thinks, but it isn’t really. He sought Harry out, then Harry sought him out, then they chose each other. That’s better. “Would you live in Accident, Maryland, live a life full of happy accidents?”

“And sad accidents?”

“Probably, yeah,” Niall allows.

Harry chews and chews on his lip, smoothing his tongue over it, then chews again. The dedication he’s giving to the question is truly more than Niall would have asked of him, as if Harry’s response were genuinely going to be the determining factor on whether he immediately gets to sent to Accident, Maryland.

“Not forever. A happy accident could take me there, if the universe makes it so. But then I’d ask a happy accident to take me away.” Harry glances over and turns the question on him before Niall has the chance to ask why.

“No, I don’t think I would,” Niall answers, after some thought. “Enough of life is happening without my say-so. I’d like to believe I’m in control of some of it, however much of it I can get.”

Says the boy who’s taking a cross country trip without knowing the itinerary before ten minutes ago. Says the boy who’s gone off and left a somewhat steady job to land himself on his mate’s sofa, without a job to pick up, to try to do the hardest fucking thing in the world, alongside the thousands of others trying to do the same, in a city he’s never been, in a country he doesn’t belong to.

Niall sits up in his seat. _What the fuck am I doing_.

His eyes switch over to the window, to the wide expanse of the world stretching out ahead of him, each passing mile as unknown to Niall as all the others they’ve traveled. It’s not closing in on him, it’s expanding, wide and infinite like the universe for all he knows of this country. It’s got borders, it’s got boundaries, but it has within it an infinity of people and places and time and life --

“Are you okay?”

Niall blinks back to himself. “Yeah.”

“Do you need me to pull over?” Harry asks seriously, his eyes flicking up to the rearview and back like he’s already preparing to migrate.

“No, I just. Um.” He clears his throat, he can’t explain it.

“It’s okay if we need to pull over.”

“No, sorry, I -- had a bit of a moment.” He scrubs his hands over his face, reaches for a bottle of water from Harry’s stash in the back seat, drains a third of it before he knows what to do with himself.

Niall’s wrecked it, then, the vibe, lets a sort of awkward silence blanket over them for the next half an hour. Harry doesn’t press him to fulfill his duty as the passenger, so Niall spends the time trying to figure out how to pick up where he left off.

Eventually he just does. “Did you know Muckanaghederdauhaulia is the longest single name town in Ireland.”

He and his mates spent hours learning its pronunciation in primary, just so they could impress the girls. Didn’t exactly work out so well as they’d planned -- turns out no girl is particularly impressed by Irish geography -- but it did land Niall with something he could trot out at a party with people who aren’t Irish. Always works for them.

And it works for Harry, who starts laughing and has Niall repeat it some five times before he’s tired of hearing it.

Niall teaches him a few of the oddest cities in Ireland, and Harry, to his credit, tries very hard, in between fits when he can’t get it, shouting, “The tongue is not meant to move this way, Niall!” Niall’s felt the same way sometimes, like Irish has to be shoved down his throat in order to be spoken.

It helps. Harry helps.

\--

Niall nearly laughs. It’s called the Heartbreak Motel, this place they’re staying, a sign out front with a neon pink broken heart looking like one of those half-a-heart necklaces girls always had when Niall was a kid.

“Hello, Maryanne,” Harry says to the lady at reception, who’s got three-inch long fake plastic nails and half a turquoise heart on a necklace around her neck.

“Harry Styles, as I live and breathe,” she answers, placing one of her hands over her heart, those nails clacking lightly with the necklace.

They lean over the counter to trade cheek kisses and for the first time Niall wonders exactly who the hell Harry Styles is. He leans against the counter, both of his arms folding up to watch her use two fingers to carefully clack at her computer. Niall’s dying a little on the inside, but Harry’s the picture of patience.

“We’ve got you on the east side, shouldn’t be able to hear the 3 am train.”

“You’re too good to me,” Harry murmurs, a soft grin tugging one of his dimples into view. Niall nearly falls over until he thinks better of it.

“Down at the end of Lonely Street,” she says with a wink to Niall. “Thank you, thank you very much.”

Niall watches Harry to see if that small smile fades, to see if there was some sort of pretense he drops once he no longer has his charm on, but he wears that smile all the way back to the car, flipping their room key by its loop over and over so the flat plastic door marker hits the key in tempo to the Elvis song he hums.

Lonely Street ends up being the second floor, no elevator, so they take themselves and all their bags up the rickety metal stairs that looks like they’ve seen better days to their room at the end of the outdoor hallway.

Harry starfishes out on his bed with a flop as Niall goes in to have a minutes long wee. There wasn’t anywhere convenient to go in Sun Studio an hour back, and there wasn’t a thing he wanted to miss of the tour through hallowed halls that served Elvis and Johnny Cash, too many of the greats.

He’s getting a fair number of likes on the Instagram with him and an actual microphone Elvis recorded with.

“You should kiss it. For good luck,” Harry had suggested as he lined up to snap Niall’s picture.

Niall had laughed. “I’m not putting my mouth on that thing.”

“Fine,” Harry said, disappointed. “Then gimme your best Elvis. The camera loves you.”

Niall looks like a right twat in the picture, his knees quirked, his hips twisted, giving Harry the best smolder in his arsenal. It was worth it for the honking laugh Harry’d given him that blurred three of his pictures before he could settle in for a focused one.

And to think, Harry had almost tried to wait by the car -- had _insisted_ he wasn’t meant to engage, just drive the car. Niall had _insisted_ that was absolute nonsense.

He nearly asks for a night in, just to be a homebody for a bit, too much excitement for the one day. But then, as soon as he comes back into the room, Harry says, quite excited, “We’re gonna eat the single best baby back ribs you’ve ever had, then we drive down to Beale Street.”

“What’s Beale Street?”

“Tourist trap, these days, unless you know where to go.” Harry winks at him.

Harry knows exactly where to go, apparently, past all the flashing lights, all the drunk tourists stumbling out of bars at too early an hour, until Harry pulls into a car park in front of a building that’s got but one sign that says _Sing Sing_.

The atmosphere is something Niall has to get used to, immediately, squinting to barely make anything out in the dim light, his nostrils burning a little at the scent of cigarette smoke that must be baked into the walls, because no one seems to be smoking. Everything seems slower here, moving to the wandering tempo set by the quartet playing smooth jazz on the other side of the bar.

It’s the kind of place Niall could spend his Friday nights, if someone deemed him cool enough. Only there’s no chance in hell Niall will ever be cool enough.

“What do you think?” Harry says, placing a light hand at the top of Niall’s back like a gentle reminder that he does actually need to move forward into the place. Niall’s feet shuffle forward begrudgingly.

“It’s sick, mate, like. Holy shit.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry agrees, his voice slow and smooth, his eyes blinking languidly. He’s already adopted the atmosphere, shifted to fit right into it. Niall wonders if he feels out of place anywhere.

“Would you like to play up there?”

Niall laughs. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

“Great.” His hand slaps Niall’s shoulder before he removes it from Niall finally. “I called ahead and put your name on the list for tonight.”

Niall blinks at him, the truth of it hitting him as slow as the tempo of the room. He’s got… a gig.

Harry frowns. “Is that… okay?”

The tender, perfectly seasoned barbeque Niall had inhaled half an hour ago starts twisting in his stomach. But then he says, “No, yeah, that’s okay.”

“We had talked about gigs on the phone, like, busking but better?”

“Of course.” Of course Harry remembered, of course Harry planned around that. He wanted to make Niall a home everywhere he went, and Niall’s never more home than on a stage. Niall runs a nervous hand through his hair. “I haven’t got my guitar.”

“I put it in the boot while you were doing up your hair.” Harry smiles, big and cheesy, like he’s awfully pleased with himself. He starts backing off toward the door. “Go find Ms. Alberta at the bar, tell her you’re Harry’s friend Niall, she’ll get you situated.”

Niall fish-mouths after him, with half a mind to shout, _you’re awfully bloody presumptuous_ across the bar at him, for what good it’d do. Very little to no good at all, now that Niall’s moved from nervous to excited, grateful. His first gig in months and he’s not playing to a hotel lounge full of pensioners.

He finds Ms. Alberta easily, swaying gently by herself on a barstool, fingers tapping in time on the bar. She looks of the place in her dark sequined dress, sunglasses indoors, her grey hair pinned up in a style people were meant to abandon some sixty years ago.

“I’m Harry’s friend Niall?”

Her face brightens at the news and she reaches over to clasp Niall’s hands in hers, soft and warm and sure. “Happy to have you, sweetheart, you good to play Sing Sing?”

She gestures for him to have a seat next to her, so he does, his feet barely touching the floor.  “Yeah, looks incredible, honestly.”

“Lotta people get their start here, if you play often enough.” She takes a sip of her drink and tips her sunglasses down to fix him with a serious look. “Not sure how much good it’ll do you if you’re one of Harry’s wanderers, though.”

“That I don’t mind. Reckon I’d just like to play.” He has got a plan to be discovered, in a sense, but most of it involves just finding places to play. To play until his fingers bleed and his throat goes raw and there’s nothing that leaves his body that doesn’t honestly and earnestly make someone feel something.

She nods like she’s okay with that, like maybe she gets it even though Niall didn’t exactly say. “Some of them are dirty ole rednecks who won’t lift their head from their glass long enough to give you a listen or two, but most of ‘em are looking for the stirring in their soul comes with good music. Shake these people to their core, you understand me?”

“Yeah, shaken and stirred,” he answers with his best Connery impression. “I’ll do my best for ya. Promise.”

She laughs, the sound of it threatening to brighten the dark pub. “Now if you hear somebody shout _play Freebird_ , you just ignore that, that’s Kevin, he’s been too drunk to stand up for about seven years now.”

Niall thinks about it. “I might could play Freebird, actually.”

“You can go on in about twenty, I’ll give ya a nice introduction.”

“That sounds great, thanks so much. It’s an honor.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” She touches his arm, gives it a comforting squeeze. “That’s a cute accent there, you from Canada?”

Niall grins. “Ireland.”

She shrugs like _close enough_ and shifts her focus back to the stage. He feels like the queen has just dismissed her from his presence so he rises with another thank you, fights an odd impulse to bow to her, and shuffles to another part of the bar to get a drink.

The next band she introduces has some sort of funk-rock fusion that makes Niall nearly wet himself at the thought that he’s got to follow them.

Harry returns with Niall’s guitar case and a large camera. When he catches Niall staring at the camera, he asks, “Do you -- can I take a few pictures?”

“Sure.” He hardly thinks he’s worth a place on the website, in the hashtag. But this place is. Niall snaps a quick picture of the band and throws it on Instagram, _Tuuuuune .. #harrydrivesinstyle_.

Harry leans back, doesn’t take a seat, propping his elbows up in a way that makes his open shirt stretch harder to accommodate the pose, exposes his chest a dangerous amount.

Niall looks away. “Can I get you a drink?”

Harry fidgets. “Ehm. No, thank you. I’m driving.”

“Water is a drink,” Niall deadpans.

Harry rolls his eyes. “Okay, yes, you may get me a water.”

Niall gets him a water and Harry puts a generous tip in the jar. “Do you not drink?”

Harry circles the edge of his glass with his finger, pushing his straw around. “No. I’m always driving.”

Niall shrugs, no skin off his nose.

It’s the waiting game, then, every minute counting down from twenty is some form of torture that only Ms. Alberta can free him from. Harry seems to know better than to try to talk to him about it, so they’re silent where they’re pressed against each other at the bar, sipping their drinks, clapping furiously between songs to pay their dues until Niall can disappear off to warm up. There’s no reason they should be pressed as close as they are, considering most have found themselves at tables and only approach the bar for a drink or two, but neither of them move.

Niall keeps his guitar propped up between his legs, his thigh pressing into Harry’s where he stands. Each brush of their arms feels electric, like maybe Niall’s gathering and storing energy with every moment to release at when the time is right. Or when he’s too overcharged to contain it.

Ms. Alberta’s introduction is nice.

“This is Niall, he’s from Ireland, long ways away from home. Let’s give him a good southern welcome onto the stage.”

He climbs up onto the stage, waves at the southern welcome, a scattering of applause, a few whoops -- one from Harry. He cracks open his guitar case on the floor, one hand sliding around the neck, the other sliding into the compartment where he keeps his glasses, picks, and tuner.

“Irish Niall,” she continues, “Irish Niall will weave his way into your heart and plant a field of clovers there. So let him in, let him in, my friends.”

The back of his neck is red by the end of it, and he rises to thank her with a kiss to the cheek. She squeezes his arms and leaves him to it.

Niall loops his guitar around him and slides on his glasses. He’s ready enough.

 _What the fuck am I doing_ , he thinks _._ His heart does a particular kind of flip of exhilaration, one that he always feels just before the _moment_ , one he hopes he never loses, no matter how many times he does this.

He clears his throat before he turns for the microphone, thumbing through a soft melody to check the levels. “Hi, I’m Niall. Horan. Niall Horan, ehm. Suppose I’ll play you a few tunes, some old favorites, yeah?”

Harry hollers another cheer from the audience, his large hands cupped around his mouth.

Niall chuckles, shaking his head at him, and plucks his way around a jaunty Springsteen tune, closest he’ll get to the vibe here.

He keeps a spare eye on Harry sometimes, once finds him so seemingly enraptured by Niall that he blindly tongues at his water, attempting to find the straw with his tongue without looking and failing so utterly. Niall has to break for a moment to keep from laughing, but he knows he can’t fight the grin that overcomes his face.

The set feels quicker than it is, his six songs over in a heartbeat and a half, but that’s the way it always goes. Time moves differently when you’re in a groove, transcending seconds and minutes into elastic moments that stretch until they’ve reached their limit.

“I’ve been Niall, you’ve been a great audience,” he tells them. “Be safe getting home, yeah? Thanks, good night.”

The applause is polite enough, stronger than it was when he’s started, but there’s not much to suggest he’s shaken or stirred them with his setlist of covers. It doesn’t matter though, nothing can really dampen the buzz shaking his whole body, that post-show adrenaline seizing his whole body.

He surrenders the stage to the next act, packing up quickly out of respect, stepping off to find Harry waiting for him at the bottom of the three steps separating him from the rest of the bar.

Harry’s hands slide easily around Niall’s back and grip firmly. “That was fucking brilliant,” he says into Niall’s ear. “Absolutely lovely, my friend.”

It’s warm and genuine, all of it, like they were truly old friends and Harry felt some sort of pride over him, and not the truth of it, which is Niall just met him some twelve hours ago. Niall clutches him back firmly nonetheless.

Niall buzzes through his next drink, through the miscellaneous congratulations he gets from people who see him at the bar, all the way down the end of Lonely Street to their room.

Harry stores his camera in a case, and that case in his other case, and he never says anything or offers anything about them, so Niall, intrigued as he is, prompts, “Get a good couple of pictures?”

“A few.”

“Hope they came out. Awfully dark in here.”

Harry heads to the toilet, stopping at the door to say, “Some things shine pretty bright on their own.”

He closes the door and leaves Niall to try to work through that on his own as he slips into his own pajamas.

It sort of feels like choosing a best friend the first day of summer camp, someone you’re going to revolve your whole world around in an isolated environment. They’re the only friend you’ve ever needed and the only friend you’ve ever wanted, and it’s not meant to occur to you, not even once, that at the end of the summer, they go home to their family and you go home to yours and if you’re lucky, you send a couple of letters back and forth for a month or two before you never see them again.

It sort of feels like that, a strong kinship based purely on circumstance. But sometimes it sort of feels like more.

Harry exits the loo in sleep pants and a t-shirt on for Muncie, Indiana, a sleep mask slid onto his forehead before he’s even in bed. He putters through the rest of his sleep ritual, promising they’ll leave by eight or so, nothing too early.

Niall presses a bar mat from Sing Sing into his journal, next to the brochure for Sun Studio, flips to another page, taps his pen at it. He’s not going to sleep a wink tonight.

\--

 

**Day 2.**

They pack up early enough to hit Austin just before sunset, both freshly showered after a shockingly good night’s rest. Harry brings them back to reception to settle their bill, Niall dutifully pulling a few bills out to pay his half to an entirely different lady Harry also apparently knows.

Niall turns to head back to the car before Harry stops him with a light hand on his arm. “You have to sign the guest book, Niall.”

“The what?”

“They have a guest book. Where you can tell other people about your stay.”

Niall frowns. “Like a proper book?”

“Yes, of recommendations from past guests.” Harry gestures to it in the corner where it sits, open about half way, on a pedestal before leading him to it.

“Who’s going to see a book of recommendations at the actual place? Shouldn’t we just fill out a Yelp review or something?”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Niall. They keep this book forever.” Harry picks up the pen they’ve got chained to the pedestal above the book and holds it out for Niall.

The pages it’s open to have some halfhearted written reviews, mostly a spare thanks to Maryanne and the rest of the staff, some stray Elvis lyrics, and the like. There isn’t much space left, so Niall squeezes into a corner.

_Nice pillows and good water pressure. Thanks for the night. Niall. 29.12.16._

Harry takes the pen when Niall offers it back to him, taps it thoughtfully against his chin before he’s fully prepared to write out his best compliments. Niall doesn’t get to see what it is, because Harry flips the page and spins on his heel to leave.

In the car, Niall thumbs his music app open and scrolls blindly through the list of artists. He’s played every song he’s got on here -- not much, since he had to dump a bunch a few months back to make more space for whatever the hell Documents and Data is. “I’m straight out of music, mate.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got a case.” Harry reaches into the back, his long torso growing even longer by some scientific miracle, until he comes back with a zipper case that can’t zip from how many CDs are stuffed in it.

“Christ.” Niall starts to flip through the pages, but it gets to be too much. He pulls the first CD he sees -- a personalized mix of what appears to be deemed The Very Best of Hanson -- and pops it in the player before he keeps flipping.

“You don’t have these in any sort of order, do you?” Niall asks, stressed.

“No, just like. Throw ‘em back in there.”

“How’re you supposed to find anything?”

“That sounds like a passenger problem, not a driver problem,” Harry answers with a grin.

Niall starts pulling CDs out, figuring alphabetical by artist will be easiest, though honestly, sorting them by mood would suit the nature of road tripping better. Alphabetical falls apart the deeper Niall gets in, finding pages and pages of homemade mix tapes. Some seem to be from people -- _ZAYN’s siCK MiX --_ some seem to be aesthetic -- _For midnight driving with the windows down_.

He’s somehow not surprised at all that Harry knows every word to the chorus of MMMbop, nor is he surprised that Harry knows what an MMMbop is.

“It’s a unit of time measurement,” he says, with a passion that says he’s tried and failed to explain this to more than one person before. “It’s about treasuring the ones you love, because in an MMMbop, in the small space of an MMMbop -- ” He snaps his fingers. “ -- they could be gone.”

“Sure, Harry.”

He goes three piles -- artists, personal mix tapes, aesthetic mixes -- popping CDs in and out of the player in a ruthless musical roulette so he gets a better understanding of where to sort the ones he can’t tell by title.

It’s good work, even if it gets him a little carsick from the concentration, because it keeps Harry from pestering him with a hundred and one personal questions like he did yesterday. Keeps Niall from trying to ask them back and getting something of a runaround from Harry.

He wonders, sometimes, if it’s just down to the rules of the road -- keep the driver entertained and the driver isn’t entertained talking about himself. Or it’s down to Harry -- trying to keep some semblance of professionalism, considering all he’s technically supposed to be is a glorified taxi driver.

Harry’s nothing but cordial throughout, though, so Niall can’t quite complain. Even if Harry’s nice because he has to be, because Niall’s paying him some ridiculously small sum to be nice to him along the way.

He’s nice to everyone, though, has this sort of charm that’s got people tripping over themselves to make him feel welcome, from Maryanne at the Heartbreak to Charles at the TLC Barbeque to Ms. Alberta at Sing Sing. Harry can’t frequent these places often enough to be a regular, not when he runs through the whole country. He’s just gotta be that big, that unforgettable, even if all he ever seems to be is temporary.

Niall tries his best, he really does, to fight it. But even when Harry does small things, like the thing he does where he sniffs hard, scrunching up his whole face. It’s the most unattractive thing Niall’s seen (and heard) Harry do in their time together, and even then Niall has to work hard to keep his eyes off him.

The more hours they spend together, the more Niall’s certain he’s not going to forget Harry. He’s not going to forget this. They have a whole world together in this little car, full up of everything Niall owns, peopled by the two of them. It’s so all-encompassing that Niall forgets, for hours at a time, that they’ve got a destination. That Niall’s going to land in LA and stay there forever, unless he tours.

Then it’ll be back to this. Days on the road, nights on the stage. Making a home everywhere he goes, then leaving it all behind in the morning.

That’s what Harry’s doing, really, a never-ending tour. Niall doesn’t mind the idea of a tour, going new places, meeting new people, seeing more of the world than he ever thought he would as a kid in Mullingar.

He doesn’t imagine he’d feel lonely -- and he’s spent a considerable amount of time imagining it -- seems impossible to feel lonely when you’ve got a whole audience on your side. And he doesn’t feel lonely now, not with Harry there to fill the hours, or any of the people Harry seems to know everywhere they go.

But there’s this difference it takes Niall to put a finger on, between the touring he dreams of and the touring Harry lives, and it’s that there’s an end. There’s something to go home to, to call home, something more than the road and the car that makes it all seem very temporary.

\--

“How would you like to be in two places at once?” Harry asks and that’s how they end up in Texarkana for lunch.

Harry doesn’t present the mystery again, as they drive through the city, as they find themselves in the car park of _Sabor de México._ They’re greeted at the door by another of Harry’s lifelong friends, Gabriel, who wears the same pastel pink shirt and khakis everyone else does, even though he’s the owner.

“Niall,” Gabriel says warmly when Harry introduces them. “ _Bienvenidos a todos_.”

“ _Mucho gusto_ ,” Niall says, reaching hard for his grade school Spanish.

Gabriel looks at him with surprise, before he turns it on Harry. “He knows Spanish.”

Niall grins. “Only enough to embarrass myself.”

Gabriel chuckles and Harry claps a hand to Niall’s shoulder like he’s pleased with him. “Niall plays the guitar. He’s a singer.”

Niall nearly winces, but Gabriel’s eyebrows raise like he’s just been given excellent news. Niall’s never found a way to tell anyone he’s a singer without them looking like they need to fight the impulse to roll their eyes, to ask him what he does for a “real job.” Those are the faces that keep him up at night.

But that’s not the face Gabriel has. “ _¿Tocas la guitarra?_ ”

“Yeah, I do a bit,” Niall answers, earning light praise from Gabriel even though Gabriel’s not even heard him play.

Once they’re seated, each of them are handed a menu with a picture of Gabriel and his family on the back that promises a true Tex-Mex experience, straight from _la cocina de mi abuela_. Ordering is difficult because apparently everything is incredible, but somehow Niall manages it.

“We’re in Texas now?”

“Yes, just on the border of Texas and Arkansas, which is spelled Ar-kansas, but it’s Arkan-saw.” Harry tilts his head and takes a sip of his water. “Learned that one the hard way.”

Niall’s not exactly sure how you go about learning something like that the hard way. But he does like to picture Harry walking around, saying it utterly wrong to everyone he meets, and charming too many people for them to have told him he was wrong.

Years and years pass. Ar-kansas, Harry says, delighted to know the state, visit the state, until someone Harry’s never met shatters him. Dims his smile, pinks his cheeks in a bad way. Niall doesn’t like this person, all of the sudden. Until he remembers they’re not real.

Harry fills the time before their food arrives talking about native languages, about the miracle of hundreds of different tribes sharing the same lands, most with their own individual languages. Harry drops knowledge like Niall should be taking notes, but Niall can’t imagine doing anything but listening to the syrupy sweetness of it all.

Gabriel personally delivers them two steaming plates and a small plastic container that they didn’t order. Niall lifts the lid -- perfectly fresh tortillas. Bless Harry and all his friends.

“Are you going to the Post Office and Courthouse?” Gabriel asks.

Harry crunches on a chip, says around his full mouth, “We sure are.”

He pops his hands on his hips. “Don’t you try to go inside, Harry Styles, I’m not bailing you out again.”

“I didn’t get _arrested_.” He throws a long-suffering look to Niall.

That’s a story right there, one you could do something with if you had half a mind for it. If he thought Harry would tell him the story. Harry must have a hundred of them, a thousand of them, an entire country’s worth of stories hidden within him.

The Texarkana Post Office and Courthouse is a large, unforgiving building, nearly ominous, how big it is. Just standing outside it, Niall feels a bit like he’s in trouble.

“Constructed with thick grey limestone, in the Beaux Arts style of architecture, the Texarkana Post Office and Courthouse is one of only two buildings in the entire country that is located in two places at once,” says walking talking encyclopedia Harry Styles, with something of a posh tour guide voice on. “You can’t go inside unless you’re on serious postal or legal business, but you can take a picture on the outside.”

They round the pavement until they reach a large white pole in the ground with a circular sign proclaiming Texarkana as the state line. Niall nearly has to back himself onto the street to get a good view of it.

“Where’s the other building?” Niall asks.

“At a Canadian border in the northeast, I believe.”

That sounds like a logistical nightmare. “How do they govern a building in two countries? Are the employees paid in Canadian dollars or American?”

Harry just looks at him. “Why are you being irritatingly prudent about this? Go stand there, let me take your picture.”

Niall hands Harry his phone for the Instagram photo, lets himself be photographed some ten different ways between his phone and Harry’s large camera until Harry seems satisfied.

Niall steps up, then he steps back, then he steps up again, over and over the state line -- _now I’m here, now I’m there, now I’m here, now I’m there_. He does his best to straddle the line, from what he can tell. _Now I’m everywhere, now I’m nowhere._

Harry’s brought him to a crossroads, and he’s not even noticed. It hits Niall harder than it feels like it should, but he’s meant to find meaning in everything, meant to feel some kind of way about it all. He’s never going to get a better opportunity than this, no clearer depiction of his choice. Like the universe has reached out to him and said, _Niall, quit fucking around. Niall, stop doubting yourself. Niall, you’ve already left._

He looks over to his right, into Arkansas, into where he’s been, into everything that’s come before this. He knows where he’s been, he knows where he stands, he knows where he’s going.

The anxiety grips him hard, that _what the fuck am I doing_ sitting too deep in his chest to ever be excised. Niall changes the answer.

He steps both feet into Texas. He’s not going back. He’s going to Los Angeles, he’s going to be a singer. That’s what he’s doing.

Harry raises his hands from the Arkansas side, pretends to be slapping at an invisible wall separating them just at the line. He’s mouthing something, and it takes Niall a few seconds of bemused watching before he realizes it’s his name. Harry’s calling for him.

“I can’t hear you,” Niall mouths back, with a point to his ear and a sorry shrug.

“Niall, help me,” he mouths very slowly, deliberately, pounding against the invisible barrier.

Niall looks around, lifts a finger, takes a few steps to the side to open an invisible door.

“Phew,” Harry sighs dramatically as he steps through. “That was a close one.”

Niall likes him so much. Too much. So he says, “Can we please get out of the road before we get run over?”

Harry grins and hops up out of the road, following the pavement for a while until he stands in front of the building. He catches Harry staring longingly at the post office with a sigh, until he starts for the car.

“I think,” Niall starts slowly. “I think I’ve got a letter to send.”

Harry bites his lip, but Niall can see the smile threatening to grow. “Have you?”

“It’s a very important one. I’ve got to send it right now, or it’ll be too late.” Niall looks around, tapping at his chin. “Have you seen a post office anywhere?”

“As luck would have it, Niall, there’s a post office right here.”

Harry’s face lights up as soon as they step into the building, just as ornate on the inside as it is on the outside. He looks every bit the tourist Niall has yet to see him be -- camera in hand, wide eyes soaking in everything. This must be what it’s like for Harry, to be on the other side of this and watch people be delighted by the places he takes them, the things he does for him.

Niall gets why Harry likes it so much. He could get used to seeing Harry look like this every day.

They pass a lobby of lifts, following the signs into the postal lobby. There’s a few supplies to take advantage of, so Niall grabs the first envelope he sees to make it look like they are on official postal business. It doesn’t help that Harry keeps looking around nervously, like at any moment someone’s going to pop out from behind the desk and question them on how official their postal business is.

“Relax,” Niall hisses.

“Sorry,” Harry mumbles, straightening his shoulders and doing that absurd sniffing thing he does before he casually leans on the counter Niall’s working from.

Niall shakes his head. This is the man who’s charmed half a country.

He works out his name on the envelope, care of Louis Tomlinson in LA, wonders if he’ll beat it there, or if it’ll be there to greet him when he arrives. He finds an address label for Priority Mail and scribbles on it, _Where have I been? Where am I now? Where am I going?_

He stuffs and seals the envelope quickly and steps in line with Harry. Serious postal business.

“This feels illicit,” Harry whispers directly into his ear.

Niall doesn’t twitch away like he feels he should. “It’s just a post office, Harry.”

They’re in and out before anyone thinks to suspect them, the letter gone to travel the country on its own path, individual of Niall’s, only to end up in the same place.

Harry leaves the building grinning like a madman, like maybe all his dreams have just come true, even though they’ve only mailed a letter. Niall wonders what else he can pull from Harry to make him look like this all over again, every day.

Niall leaves the building suspended between two places with the last of his doubt draining from him. They have to walk back over to Arkansas, because that’s where they parked, but Niall doesn’t let that ruin the sentiment. There’s no going back.

\--

Austin is cool, is the immediate first impression you get driving around, almost like you can recognize when you’ve entered it the second you have.

Harry takes them on a driving tour around from the pink state capitol building, on down through the skyscrapers, a hundred stores and restaurants. There are graffiti littering the sides of buildings like it’s just understood that it’s an acceptable alternative to a regular coat of paint -- some of them whole murals, other ones, like Niall’s favorite, a simple alien looking thing greeting everyone with a _hi how are you_.

Harry’s got odd commentary, as per usual, finding just as many fun facts about a random alleyway as he does the place with the pizza the size of your face that you have to fold over to eat because if you use a fork and knife, they’ll all laugh at you.

Niall rides with the window down, wind whipping his fringe probably to the point of completely unstyling it altogether. It’s mild out, for December, utterly gorgeous as the sun sets around them. They get stuck in a fair amount of traffic trying to get to their motel; music pumps out of their windows to join everyone else’s as it floats through the air. Niall’s always hated traffic, but there’s something less tragic about it when you haven’t got anywhere to go.

Harry keeps his hand suspended out the window, fingers trailing in the wind, the first time Niall’s seen him without both his hands on the wheel. He sings quietly, this gentle rumbling Niall can hardly hear over the music, but it’s there. And it’s good, the sneaky bastard. Good enough to be dangerous.

The sun is just barely clinging to its spot in the sky by the time they pull up to the motel. It’s been a long ten-plus hours, but it’s felt like nothing, passed faster than any of his shifts at the club.

The lobby has a large rack of Texas brochures in favor of a concierge that Niall picks through half-heartedly while Harry does whatever song and dance he’s got planned for the person manning the desk. There’s the odd leftover Christmas event, a couple of horse extravaganzas, a barbeque restaurant literally shaped like a cowboy hat.

He’s keen to follow whatever plan Harry’s got for them, not much opinion one way or the other, until he spies a brochure for the Space Center Houston and snatches it up.

“What’s that?” says Harry, suddenly behind him, close enough that Niall can feel where his chest brushes against Niall’s back. Niall shows him and Harry’s head tilts. “Are you interested in that?”

“Love space. Stars and stuff. Had a telescope for a while as a kid, used to try to name ‘em all. Thought maybe I’d go see ‘em someday.” Niall flips open the brochure, at the glossy images of rockets he thought he’d never see. “Had no idea where about this was, can’t believe it’s just in Texas. They do it all here, everything except actually launch the rockets, and such.”

He looks back at Harry when he can’t feel him against his back anymore. “Can we go here? Is it close?”

Harry pulls at his lip, leaning his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s just, it’s in the complete opposite direction, it’s to the east.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

He looks genuinely concerned now, like somehow he’s managed to wrong Niall. He hasn’t, he truly hasn’t. “I didn’t know you were interested, or I’d have planned a stop there.”

“It’s fine, Harry.” Niall pops the brochure back into the slot, like _no harm no foul_ , but Harry pouts his way all the way to their room. Niall doesn’t know what to do with it, so he doesn’t do anything with it -- dumps his bag and his guitar on the bed and heads straight for a shower.

He doesn’t even feel particularly sweaty or anything, but something about being fused to a car seat for most of the day demands a shower to feel human again. He hums his way through a few scales, letting the warmth of the shower loosen him up.

Harry’s on his phone when Niall gets out. He’s still sitting in the same spot on his bed, his sunglasses still in his hair, the only indication he’s moved at all is he’s traded a half-buttoned peach shirt for a half-buttoned maroon one with stars on. Niall starts for his own case to grab a new shirt.

“How -- ” Harry starts and stops when he looks up at Niall. His head snaps back down. “I -- Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Niall slides on a shirt, does up the buttons quickly. He hadn’t thought twice about bringing a change with him, had been too comfortable to even consider it’d be a bit inappropriate to walk around with no shirt on. “I’m decent.”

A grin tugs at one side of Harry’s lips, a slick slide of his eyes up Niall’s body directly contradicts the modesty he’d exhibited just seconds ago. “I’ll say.”

“You really know how to compliment a boy,” Niall deadpans, turns to flop on the bed just so Harry can’t see how his face heats up.

Harry rises, sliding his phone into his pocket. “How do you feel about Greek?”

Niall eyes him. “As a concept?”

“As a food, first, then we can talk concepts.”

“Favorably,” Niall decides after a moment of serious deliberation.

They’re greeted kindly at the restaurant, as per usual, by two men who may or may not be the titular Halal Bros. They ask Harry if he’s keeping it halal, and Harry lies straight through his teeth, “I’m trying my best.” Niall doesn’t call him on it, but there was nothing halal about the half rack of ribs Harry devoured last night.

Harry tells him to order something he can eat with his hands, portable-like, so he does, because Harry says next, “How do you feel about a walk?”

He’s not sure he likes this, Harry checking in on him after he hasn’t this whole trip, like he’s gun-shy. But Niall agrees anyway, “That’d be just fine.”

\--

There’s even more of Austin he’s not seen even with the full driving tour, the city seeming to stretch out for miles and miles and miles, full of people Niall will never know, never meet, not even in that brief but intense way Harry seems to have.

Harry pulls into a park, somewhat lush even in the winter, and leads them on a stroll down a well-traveled walking path, well-lit with extraordinary arches of Christmas lights yet to be taken down. There’s a whole world here in Austin, same as there was a whole world in Memphis. A whole world everywhere Niall’s ever lived, but it’s never felt this big.

Ireland’s not exactly small, not by Niall’s figuring, but they did google it on the road earlier, and it felt like a slap to the face to read the whole of Ireland could fit into the state of Texas alone some comfortable eight times. There could be eight of him in Texas, eight of his da, eight of his favorite primary school teacher --

“What’re you thinking?” Harry interrupts like he seems to know he’s interrupting.

Niall shrugs and peels at the foil around his gyro. “Nothing.”

“Don’t think so. You’re going somewhere when you get like that. Sort of spacey, like. You should take me with you.”

Niall’s always been a bit of a wonderer -- a wanderer of the mind, maybe, flying off in thought every which way he can think of, until he forgets he’s supposed to keep the feet on the ground.

But it’s the fact that nobody’s ever asked to wander with him that has Niall hesitating, that has Niall letting him in. “D’you think, um, there’s eight of me in Texas?”

“I don’t follow,” Harry says carefully.

“Eight Irelands you can fit in this state, like. If there’s a me in every town like where I’m from, and we all feel the same way and think the same way and write our songs about the same thing. And we all do this, we all pack up the entire contents of our lives into a car or a train or a bus or a plane, and we go looking for a way to say all the things we’ve thought and felt and wrote our songs about.”

He’s left behind any thoughts that he’s gonna go home, at least not until he gives it a go. So it’s not getting there that’s the problem, it’s what he’s going to do when he does. What’s he going to say?

“And when I get there, there’s been seven of me come before, singing my songs, asking me what it is I’ve got to say that’s any different than any Niall Horan who’s already around, and… sometimes it feels like I’ve got nothing at all.”

He takes a deep breath out, something of a laugh coloring the end of it. It feels ridiculous saying all these things out loud he doesn’t bother telling anyone, it feels like too much to just sit on a person and expect them to do something with it. “Anyway. Sorry. But you asked.”

Harry, who’s been respectfully quiet or maybe just quietly bewildered for about twenty-seven minutes now, takes a bit of his wrap, chewing thoughtfully and starting to say around the shawarma in his mouth, “I think maybe it’d be good.”

He stops to swallow. It’s disgusting and Niall’s hanging on every word as he continues, “If there were people like us. 'Cos that means, like, you’ve got people who get it. Unique is fine and all, but sometimes it’s just nice to have someone who’s like you. Who gets it. Who gets you. So you don’t really feel alone.”

There’s honestly something to that, if Niall sits down and unpacks it. But it’s exhausting, he’s just exhausted. It should be comforting, Niall reckons, somebody else knowing how he feels, someone who can share in the experience. If he was experiencing anything. They could share something to say if either of them even had something to say.

“Maybe me and the Nialls could start a band.”

“The Octo-Nialls,” Harry suggests.

“Nialler’s Eight.”

“The M8s, only instead of _ates_ , it’s just the letter 8, like M-eights, but Mates.”

Niall’s going to draw the line there. “If you gotta teach someone how to use your band name, you’re doing it wrong.”

They finally break out of the line of trees at a point in the trail where they get a good view of the river, the Austin skyline stretching out ahead of them, a dusting of stars coloring the darkness.

“Gorgeous,” Harry says. “Clear.”

Niall nods. “New moon tonight.”

“I like that you just know that. I really had no idea you liked space.”

Niall rolls his eyes. “Right, in the thirty-six or so hours you’ve known me, we have indeed covered all of my bases.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Harry sniffs.

“I contain multitudes, Harry. My interests don’t start and stop with music.”

“How’d you get into it?”

“I was a kid, you know, kids are always dreaming of being astronauts. I did this rocket once because of a movie -- you ever see that movie, _October Sky_?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s about these kids who like build rockets, not like bottle rockets, like nearly proper ones. I convinced me brother Greg to go in with me to get this rocket, right. Set the thing off too close to town, nearly burned someone’s cottage down. After that, being an astronaut was pretty much out of the question.”

“Naturally.”

“So I chose the next hardest career, of course. And I don't have to become a doctor or anything first, so I reckon that's good.”

Though, in honesty, space always seemed as inaccessible as music, something his father didn’t understand, something they said he had no right to go after. People from his town aren’t meant to go into space, people in his town aren’t meant to light up a stage. They stay and become butchers, they stay and work a factory. They make a good living, they don’t go wandering off in search of a _happening_. They’re not meant to be larger than life.

“Astronauts, like,” Niall tries to explain. “They touch the stars. There’s no one else like them. You talked about not being alone, but there’s twelve people who walked on the moon. They’ll have things to talk about for the rest of their lives and it’ll mean something.”

Harry watches him for a moment, assessing by the looks of it. “You’re a little lyrical, aren’t you?”

“Occupational hazard?” Niall guesses, grateful for the darkness around them so Harry can’t see the burn in his cheeks.

“Mm,” Harry appears to agree with his mouth full again. The garlic mayo slides down his fingers, and he laps it up like not a drop of it is worth wasting.

“Good?” Niall asks.

“Yeah, you gotta try it.” Harry stops in his tracks to shove the shawarma under Niall’s nose.

 _This is weird,_ Niall thinks, but even then he takes a bite, careful of any of Harry’s fingers, and he can’t even regret it, it really is perfectly marinated. Niall’s talked too much himself to get much into his gyro, so he makes for the bench, forces silence.

The world isn’t passing them by at eighty miles per hour at the promise of the next destination. It’s good to just sit in one place a while. He’ll remember this when he gets restless, when he thinks he’s not going fast enough to make the best of his time here. It’s important to just sit with someone else’s warmth pressed against you, eat a gyro, and try to name the stars.

He doesn’t tell Harry that, he’s not meant to just say those sorts of things out loud. They’re for songs, they’re for art so people will think they’re okay. So people won’t sigh at Niall and tell him _people don’t actually talk like that_.

Not that he thinks Harry would tell him that.

Harry checks his phone, steers them back the way they came towards the car. “They play Austin City Limits here. It’s this massive music festival. You should consider playing it someday.”

Niall chuckles. “Sure, I’ll consider it.”

\--

Harry snags a space quickly, sliding into the gap in cars with a grin on his face like he’s just performed some sort of miracle. Niall glances out the window at the staircase that leads down until Niall can’t see where it lets out, at the street sign that promises _Hot Mic in the City_.

“You hid my guitar in the boot again,” Niall guesses.

“Yes, while you were in the shower. You’ll like this place, it’s got a good vibe. Perfect for you.”

Niall sighs and lets Harry lead the way.

The crowd of Hot Mic is noticeably younger than Sing Sing, like maybe this is a hangout of uni kids and other kids who’ve just graduated and haven’t brought themselves to seek out a grown-up bar. There’s the rhythmic clacking of billiards coming from the far corner. A girl on the mic up front isn’t singing, but she is performing, something Niall thinks is spoken word poetry. He thought that sort of thing only really existed in the movies.

No one greets them as soon as they come in, so Niall asks, “Who do you know here?”

Harry quirks an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”

“You’ve got a mate everywhere. Who do you know here?” Niall knows this game, he’s played it enough in the last forty-eight hours.

A smile tugs at one corner of Harry’s lips, a little rueful at being called out. “Liam. The bartender.”

Niall follows his eyes over to the young lad behind the bar with a buttoned vest and rolled up shirt sleeves and a trimmed beard surrounding his wide smile. Every one of Harry’s people looks so individual, so full of life. There’s an entirety to them that Harry shares in, that Niall will never truly know. “What’s his story?”

“I drove him here.” And then Harry doesn’t say anything else.

Niall rolls his eyes so hard they feel a bit strained after. “You drove me here.”

“That I did,” Harry allows.

“Is that the extent of our story?”

Harry looks at him. “No.”

Niall waits and waits and Harry looks like he’s going to wait even longer, until he finally gives in.

“Liam, he -- well, he planned our trip with his girlfriend and she finished with him a few days before we were supposed to go. So Liam and I went anyway, chucked the itinerary. Liam closed his eyes and pointed to a place we should go and it was Austin. And when we got here, he decided he didn’t want to leave. I stayed long enough to get him set up in a flat with a friend of mine, Richard, a science teacher who plays Angelica in a drag spoof of _Hamilton_ on the weekends,” Harry rattles off like it’s utterly common knowledge. “Do you feel better now?”

He does, actually. “Loads.”

Harry doesn’t forget them, doesn’t forget any of them, and that’s something of a small miracle. Harry can pass in and out of a hundred people’s lives, and they’re still never gone from him. Niall can’t quite figure out why he’s so keen to have Harry remember him.

Niall lets Liam pour him a pint of something local and he sips it at the bar, his guitar case wedged between his legs where they’re hooked in the legs of his barstool. Harry stands beside him, his face pinched like his brain is churning so furiously it hurts him. Niall lets him find his words in his own time.

“I thought maybe,” Harry starts, pulling at his lip like perhaps he’s thought better of it.

“Yeah?” Niall prompts gently.

“I thought maybe you’d play some of your songs tonight.”

That’s not what Niall was expecting. Not in the slightest. He’s struck a little dumb with it.

“If you want,” Harry blurts, a line creasing between his eyebrows. “I haven’t heard them yet, and -- well, um, if you’re more comfortable with the covers, it’s, I shouldn’t have presumed -- ”

“I’ll play you a few songs,” Niall says, if only to shut him up. He’s going to have to get used to it eventually, letting strangers hear them, making his own way of it instead of leaning on the comfort and familiarity of someone else’s music. Nobody’s going to want to listen to him if they can just listen to the original. He needs to be original.

He’s on stage before he knows it, though it’s less of a stage, more a platform with a well-worn mic and a blisteringly hot spotlight. Harry follows him right up, pops the top button of Niall’s shirt open.

“There you go. All ready,” Harry says, patting at Niall’s chest before he disappears back into the audience.

Niall turns to fuss with his guitar, not to hide the smile he can’t bite down on, but because he’s got serious business to attend to. He checks each of the strings, but not much has changed from last night. He pops his glasses on, thinks _what the fuck am I doing_ , and gets to work. Playing his own songs.

Some of it feels disingenuous, reaching for feelings that aren’t there. Singing about homesickness when he’s never felt it, singing about an unending love when he’s never had one, singing about fierce loyalty when he’s tied himself to no one.

Near the end, he throws an Ed Sheeran in for good measure, growls his way through Sex on Fire last because that always seems to take more of a tax on his throat than he’s learned how to recover from so far. There’s a fair bit of chatter through Niall’s originals, he catches a few people singing along to the covers. It’s not a cold reception -- it’s one of the better ones he’s had outside his family’s sitting room.

The applause is genuine enough when Niall thanks them and bids them a good night. There’s a wild hollering from the back that Niall can only assume is Harry. Niall works his way off stage toward his hollering idiot of a driver, gets stopped a time or two to receive congratulations that has him flustered, his face burning hotter than it had under the stage lights.

He’s not even sure it’s his feet carrying him across the floor or if it’s this feeling, the weightlessness that comes from having performed. He’s like this sometimes, afterwards, flitting between so wired he could climb a mountain and so at peace he could sleep for twenty-four hours. There’s nothing quite like it.

Harry’s waiting for him at the bar, his arms open like Niall should be running to him. Niall doesn’t run to him, but it’s a near thing.

“Thank you,” he says, like Niall’s done him some sort of incredible good. His hands find Niall’s arms.

“Thank you,” Niall parrots, because Harry actually has.

Harry wraps him in a hug, his lips finding Niall’s ear, nearly brushing his skin lightly. Then he shouts, “I’ve got to wee!” and bounces off, a shit eating grin carrying him along the way.

Niall watches him go, massaging at his damaged ear for all it’s worth. Bastard.

“Another?” Liam asks, catching his attention.

Niall waves his hand. “Surprise me.”

So Liam does. It takes like chilled piss. Niall swallows hard and nods after him. “Ta.”

Liam leans on the bar, his tattooed arms skirting close enough to a puddle of something on the wood that Niall gets nervous. “You like Harry?”

Niall clears his throat. It shouldn’t be that obvious. “Everyone likes Harry.”

Liam appears to think real hard on that, as if it’s a thing Niall’s said in earnest instead of an incredible deflection. “I guess that’s true. He’s got this way about him.”

“Yeah, I dunno what it is. But it’s a way.”

“Harry,” Liam pauses like he’s trying to figure out the best way to say whatever he’s feeling, like it’s important to get it right, “happens to people.”

Niall spins his pint on his bar mat. That feels about right. “What happens to Harry?”

Liam looks thoughtful for a moment. “Dunno.”

Liam’s the only one he’s met who’s traveled Harry, who’s spent more than a few hours within him at their own business. He’s gotta know something. “What’s his deal?”

Liam quirks an eyebrow. “Drives people around for money?”

“Says that on his website,” Niall says with an impatient wave of his hand. “What’s his _deal_?”

“I dunno, mate, reckon he never told me.” He shrugs like that’s fair play, but it just doesn’t work for Niall. He means to keep prodding at him, but Liam unearths a small envelope and slides it to him. “Here are your tips.”

Niall blinks. “Tips?”

“From the gig. Harry’s been talking you up at the bar. Great for you, great for me. People like to buy him drinks.”

“Harry doesn’t drink.” He says it like a fact instead of a suspicion, that even if Harry were offered some when he wasn’t driving, he’d say no. He’s said no so much he’s tattooed it on the side of his arm, odd strokes scratching out _you booze you lose_ on either side of a bottle. Niall’s seen it when Harry’d worn a t-shirt to bed.

Liam winks, probably, it looks more like a blink, but the conspiratorial way he leans in suggests to Niall it’s meant to be a wink. “I take them and pour them out when no one’s looking, don’t worry.”

“Good.”

Liam watches him for a while, so Niall watches him right back. “You’re a good kid,” Liam decides.

“How d’you reckon?”

“Well, Harry likes you, that usually means something.”

Niall tilts his head, chews on the inside of his cheek, wonders what it is Harry’s told Liam about him.

“Also that’s the shittiest IPA we’ve got here, and you’ve not said a word,” Liam says with a snort.

“Fuck off.” He slides the pint away from him in disgust.

“It was Harry’s idea,” Liam tattles, swiftly replaces the shit pint with another one. He pretends someone’s calling to him on the other side of the bar and slides off.

Charmed as he is, Niall can’t even find it within himself to be mad about it.

\--

Niall folds his glasses at the bedside table, nearly having forgotten he was wearing them until he saw them in the bathroom mirror.

Harry’s got a laptop sitting on his lap, and he considers whatever’s on the screen thoughtfully. Niall wonders if it’s another applicant. Wonders if this is what Harry looked like when he was reading Niall’s application, alternately tapping a finger to his lips and pulling at them.

Niall wonders, for the millionth time, what’s his deal. “Have you traveled, like all over? Or just America?”

Harry double takes at him like maybe it’s a hard question, then he turns back to his laptop to close it. “America, mostly. Is this the farthest from home you’ve ever been?”

“I’ve got a cousin in Australia, Deo. Worked three summers straight just to save up enough for the ticket, since my da… Well. Never been anywhere else. Not even London. Melbourne’s sick, anyway, love to go back some day.”

“When you’re rich and famous?”

“Yeah, when I’m rich and famous,” Niall laughs.

“I dunno why you say it in that sort of tone. You’re very good.”

It gets under Niall’s skin, the matter of fact way Harry goes about saying things like that, things that could turn your whole world on its side.

“Thanks, Harry.”

Niall shoves his way under all seven of the motel covers before he realizes Harry’d turned back on him masterfully. And Niall still doesn’t know a thing about him. He looks up to call Harry on it, but Harry slides his sleep mask on. Niall thinks he’s gone to sleep as quick as that, until he keeps talking.

“Deeeeeeeeeeeo,” Harry drags out, like he’s trying it out on his tongue.

“Yep.”

“Deeeeeeeeeeeo,” Harry repeats, and Niall doesn’t get it until Harry follows it up with, “Me say deeeeeeeeeeo.”

Niall joins him with a higher harmony, “Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

Harry snorts, a grin has his cheeks dislodging the sleep mask slightly. He reaches up to adjust it back down.

“Thanks for that,” Niall says, rolling to get under his duvet and settle in himself. “Now I’m never going to look at him again without hearing that fucking song.”

“You’ve never thought that, with a name like his?”

“Literally never. But now you’ve changed me.”

Harry rolls onto his side to face Niall, his blinded eyes pointing right at him, his arms sliding across his chest like he’s going to hug himself to sleep. “For the better, I hope,” he mumbles.

Niall reaches over and turns off the light between them. Feels like the truth when he says, “Yeah. For the better.”

\--

 

**Day 3.**

Harry wakes Niall up at the literal asscrack of dawn by stripping his duvet off him and tossing it on the floor. Cold air hits Niall’s legs like he’s jumped in the ocean, and slowly creeps its way up the rest of his body.

Niall presses his face into his pillow. “What the fuck, Harry.”

“Get up, Niall, we’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

“Fuck off with that.”

“I’m dead serious, get up, or I’ll leave you.”

“No, you won’t.”

He can hear Harry sigh. “No, I won’t, but if you miss this, you’ll regret it.”

Niall peeks an eye at him. He’s already dressed, perched on the balls of his feet and hanging his head over Niall’s face on the bed. “I’m sleeping in the car.”

Harry pauses, considering it. “It’s worth it. Get your arse out of bed.”

Niall dresses and packs as quick as humanly possible so he can settle into Harry’s passenger seat and get right back to sleep.

“Don’t forget your glasses,” Harry says, sort of like it’s a reminder, even though he immediately slides them on, pushing them up until they’ve bent back his hair in seven ridiculous directions.

It makes Niall feel some kind of way, but he can’t put a name to it.

Niall signs the guest book first, scribbles something mindless about things in Austin being weird, but the motel being welcoming. It’s not his best work, honestly, but he’s only got the one eye squinted open, and his usually loopy writing looks mostly like a scribble.

He leans against the wall and watches Harry nearly chew on the marker, he’s thinking so hard on the mark he’ll leave. Niall feels bad, then, watching him. Even though he’s one in hundreds of others in this book, he’s got to leave something sincere. He’ll make a difference on this page.

“All right, Niall?” he says when he’s done and whisks out lobby, his hold all clutched carefully to his side.

Niall watches him go, wonders who he is.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does, just as soon as they hit the highway, hadn’t realized just how tired he was after staying up all night, absolutely buzzing. He wakes to the gentle press of Harry’s fingers into his shoulder, and it’s a hard fight to consciousness.

“You’ll need these,” Harry says, sliding his glasses out of his hair and passing them to Niall.

Niall makes a face. The lenses are impossibly greasy. “Why?”

“You’ll want to fit in.” He flips his left blinker and prepares to turn.

Niall sits up as soon as his eyes hit two airplanes suspended at the side of the road. He peers over him at the sign on the side of the ride. Space Center Houston. “Oh. Holy shit. Are you -- this is like the opposite direction we’re supposed to be going!”

“Yeah, but you wanted to see it, right?”

“Well. Yeah.”

Harry grins over at him. “We’ll drive through the night to make up time.”

Niall scrubs at his lenses with the hem of his shirt and slides them on, just because Harry’s asked him to.

The first bit of it you see in the carpark is an actual goddamn space shuttle. The kind Niall would watch on the TV when he was a lad, forever bitter that nobody from Ireland ever wanted them to join ESA and go up there.

He’d wander through the streets of Mullingar, practically singing _there must be more to the provincial life_ , wondering if there was ever a way he’d be the first Irish astronaut. If he could get over the fact that he was a bit shit at science in school, if he could get over the fact that being in a capsule with no escape made his stomach turn.

It’d been the real reason he’d turned to music, sort of, even though music was always there. He’d boiled it down at one point, figured out he mostly just wanted to see as much of the world as he could manage, gather it all up and hold it inside him. And if he couldn’t do it from up there, he’d do it down here. Roam the entire damn thing, playing music, making a mark, leaving stories in his wake.

Harry parks the car and they scramble out and over to the fence separating them from the shuttle. They stand pressed close to each other and look out at what’s waiting for them.

“Are you excited, mate?” Harry asks.

“Beyond excited. I -- thank you.” Niall tears his eyes away from the shuttle and looks over to him. “This is so fucking cool, I can’t believe it. Thank you.”

Harry shrugs, something nearly bashful overcoming his face. “No one else I’d rather go to space with than you.”

He holds his hand up for a high five, which Niall gives him, but Harry shifts his fingers, presses them through Niall’s until they’re laced together and practically holding hands in the middle of the air.

“C’mon,” Harry says, dragging Niall along by their connection, and doesn’t let go. Niall doesn’t want him to let go.

\--

Niall shivers his whole way through the tram tour, wishing he’d decided to lug his big coat in. He nearly forgets his excitement huddled in close to Harry, mind barely catching half of the speech playing through the speakers.

Harry keeps his arm wrapped around Niall’s shoulders, but by the steel in his jaw, Niall’s certain he’s cold too. It’s worth it, though, for the brief reprieve into the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility.

They’ve got so much new information for him, Niall’s head spins. He almost feels like he should be taking notes, just in deference to the fact that miracles are happening here.

Harry, on the other hand, just nods along with it, takes stuff in with wide, lightly interested eyes, and spends more time asking Niall if he could pull off the Robonaut’s gold helmet for when he rides his motorcycle.

“I didn’t know you have a motorcycle,” Niall says, in lieu of a yes or no.

Harry hums primly, his eyebrows raising. “In the thirty-six or so hours you’ve known me, you haven’t covered all of my bases.”

Niall just makes a face at him for calling back his own words at him, instead of saying something like, _it’s not for lack of trying_.

He doesn’t go truly breathless until they usher themselves out of the cold Rocket Park into the giant warehouse looking thing that promises a Saturn V rocket. And it follows through. The thing is massive -- Niall’s seen pictures throughout this whole place, but nothing prepares you for how truly massive the thing is. That people put themselves inside this and blasted off into space.

They trail down the side and soak up all the information painted on the wall about each of the missions they’d taken with these rockets. Every time someone’s managed to perform a miracle.  

Harry reads aloud, a murmur, the words they’d left on the moon. “We came in peace for all mankind.” It’s the first thing either of them have said since they’d gotten in here, humbled by something the size of a god.

Niall looks back up at the rocket, overwhelmed. “Do you ever just feel really fucking small?”

“Well, I am pretty tall.”

Niall just looks at him. It’s not the time, it’s not the place. He just wants something honest.

“Yeah,” Harry allows. “Yeah, I feel small.”

“They’re just changing the world. Everyone who’s ever been here.”

“You’re changing the world too,” Harry says. Niall nearly goes to object, but Harry keeps on. “With your songs. With your kindness. Small things. They’re always changing the world. The two of us together, we’re changing the world right here.”

He feels small, but, he supposes, in a good way. There’s a whole universe of things going on at once, and if Harry’s right, Niall’s playing a part. He’s small and he’s doing small things, but even the smallest drops make a ripple, right?

Or maybe it’s that time will move on with or without him, the universe stretches vast and eternal whether he’s in it or not. And it’s up to him how much of it he plans to occupy. How much of it he wants to keep.

“Selfie?” Niall asks even though he knows better. He’s been through Harry’s entire site, his entire hashtag, his entire Instagram, and not a single bit of it has a real picture of Harry on it. But Harry is something he wants to keep.

Harry chews on his lip, has Niall considering taking it back, before he says, “Yeah.”

He places his head on Niall’s shoulder and looks up at the camera. There’s no smile on his face, but he looks light, amused. Niall frames the rocket behind them and snaps the perfect shot.

Harry keeps his head hooked over Niall’s shoulder to look at the picture. Niall holds it up for him and Harry hums. “Send that to me, yeah?”

Niall raises his eyebrows, but says, “‘Course.” He’d like it if Harry had a little piece of them. Niall shoots it off in a text before he pockets his phone, decides to keep the photo just for himself.

\--

They spend hours and hours turning themselves into icicles on every tram tour, but Harry won’t leave without seeing it all, insistent that he always makes the most of wherever he goes, because he’s never sure if he’s going to go back. Niall’s more than happy to oblige, trying his best not to shiver, but he’s never been great with the cold.

They curl around a couple of coffees in the food court after. Niall keeps his cup so close to his face, the steam fogs up his lenses.

Harry laughs at him, and taps at them. “What’s the story? With the glasses when you perform?”

Niall hesitates. He knows the answer, wonders if it’ll sound silly once he’s said it out loud. Nobody’s ever asked before. “Oh, it’s just. I dunno, I used to do it to feel like I was ready? Guitar on, glasses on, ready to go. Doesn’t feel right without them. Don’t actually do much, though.”

“So you don’t need glasses?”

“Nah, they’re just… an accessory, I guess.” It is more than that, sometimes. He feels a bit silly saying it, but he does anyway. “A window through which to see the audience, a frame.”

“A barrier?”

“I -- no, it’s not meant to be.”

He’s never thought of it that way, that he’s using them to separate himself. That the audience is out there, and Niall’s up here. It’s never been about that. He’s always wanted to bring them closer, to show them his truths.

“You look good in them,” Harry says.

“Yeah?”

Harry looks at him for a long while, eyes roaming his face like maybe he’s reassessing his decision. It makes Niall want to duck his head away from the power of his stare, it makes Niall want to never look away. But then Harry answers, “Yeah. Like a -- sexy rock star scientist.”

Niall laughs, shaking his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You ever think of that? Singing songs about space and, like, educating people?”

“Nobody’d buy an album of educational space rock songs.”

“I would. I’d buy your album no matter what was on it,” Harry says, in that way again, his eyes looking as lazy as his smile.

Niall trusts him, impossibly, but he supposes this must be why Harry’s good at what Harry does. He’s got this way of saying things that sound utterly truthful when they’d come off dripping with sarcasm or insincerity with anyone else. It has Niall wanting to do anything for him, because Harry seems to want to do anything for him.

Niall just hopes it’s real. He couldn’t bewitch a whole nation of people, surely, without it being real.

Harry turns wide eyes on him soon as they’re rounding the corner for the exit. “Love a gift shop, Niall.”

“Go on then,” Niall says with a laugh.

Harry disappears off and Niall hovers near an uncrowded part of the shop, having had his fill of pressing close to people who aren’t Harry from their trip inside the space shuttle.

Niall knows better than to go looking for his name in the personalized keychain section, but he browses anyway. Just to see if maybe they’ve got Harry. Or something.

Harry comes to stand next to him after a long while, looking quite concerned, a bundle of fabric in one hand. “Houston, we have a problem.”

Niall brings a hand to Harry’s lower back, his thumb trailing up and down soothingly. “What’s wrong, petal?”

Harry pauses, his cheeks going pink like he’s flustered. Niall removes his hand, wonders why it is he’s done that so easily, touched Harry without permission. They’ve been on top of each other all day, but somehow that felt different. Intimate.

Harry pulls at his lip a moment, a crease forming between his eyes. “I, uh. Ha. I can’t decide which shirt to get?”

Niall nods, dumbly, waves his hand in an invitation.

“Classic, right?” Harry holds up a shirt with the NASA logo, distressed. Looks like something Niall’d wear. Something Niall would steal from Harry and wear himself. “Or this one?” He holds up a shirt that says _I need my SPACE_ , and it feels immediately right.

“I like the meatball logo, but this one -- _I need my space_? That’s you.”

Harry’s mouth quirks to one side, popping a dimple. “The meatball logo?”

“That’s -- that’s what they call it, the circle one.” Niall clears his throat.

The other dimple pops now, coming in strong as he teases, “Look at you. Knowing things.”

“Shut up.”

Harry’s eyes fall onto the shirts, eyes roaming in that same critical assessment he’d given Niall just a few minutes earlier. “I need my space, huh?”

“Yeah. You know. To drive. You’re everywhere.”

Harry’s eyebrows press closer together. “I do, don’t I,” he says, but he sounds unsure of it. Niall didn’t mean anything by it, the casual observation. He doesn’t mean to imply Harry’s lonely or Harry’s standoffish, just because he needs his space. Niall needs it too. It’s just Niall imagines that’s the nature of being a nomad like Harry, impossible to tie down to one spot.

Maybe Harry’s got that itch to conquer the whole world too, to roam all of it until it all belongs to him. And the two of them, they’ve decided to start in America.

It’d be dangerous of Niall to say he’d want to travel the whole of the world with Harry.

Harry gets the shirt Niall recommends for him in the end. And Niall purchases the other.

\--

Harry insists on a song from Niall as soon as they pass Austin again, just as the sun’s going down. “Why put on the radio when I’ve got a radio right here?” he asks with a grin.

Niall’s not exactly a performing monkey, hopping to with a song at anyone’s casual request. It’s his job, his _craft_ , if he can go so far as to say, not a party trick. But somehow he can’t find it in himself to deny Harry, not after all he’s done.

Niall picks through the opening of Crazy on You, one of the harder melodies to work around, especially sitting in a car, but it’s something he likes to trot out to remind himself he’s good at this. It’s got his fingers flying wildly up and down the fret until he shifts into the frantic strumming just before the electric guitar comes in.

Harry starts intoning the accompanying melody, that low thumping, _dum dumdumdumdum dumdum._ It’s hilarious.

“Keep going,” Harry demands, and that’s only when Niall realizes he’s stopped.

“Right, sorry.”

“ _Craaaaaaaazy on you!_ ” Harry shouts, an unholy growl that sends shivers down Niall’s spine for a moment before he realizes it’s just the wrong part of the song, like a full minute ahead of where Niall is. Niall shifts to the chorus quickly, just so Harry doesn’t stop. “Sorry, I don’t know any of the words besides the chorus,” Harry rushes out before he launches into another _craaaaaaaaaaaazy on you._

They laugh their way through the rest of the song, Harry surrendering the chorus to the other verses when Niall insists on singing and picking his way through them. It’s almost like they’re making music together, and Niall likes what little of it he can get to. It’s been a long while since he’s jammed with other musicians -- not that he knows whether Harry’s a musician, but he’s got the voice to be one when he tries.

The song fades away into lazy picking, fingers warming up running through scales, the kind of mindless playing Niall does when he wants to chat. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You, Niall Horan, may ask me two.”

“What do you do for money?”

“I drive people across the country,” he deadpans.

Niall rolls his eyes. “No, like actual money.”

“Are you not planning to pay me actual money?”

“You know, probably better than I do, if you charge everyone what you’re charging me, you hardly make enough for gas and lodging. This isn’t exactly a sustainable business model.”

Harry presses a hand quickly to his chest and huffs out a breath. “Jesus, Niall, watch the dirty talk, I’m driving. You can’t just sit there and say things like _sustainable business model_ in those glasses. I’m getting all flustered.”

“Shut up, Harry.” He stills his fingers and looks over at Harry, not that Harry’s looking back. Harry doesn’t take his eyes off the road, almost never, a true professional. “What do you do for like, indemnification, or like. To make sure people actually pay you.”

“Well, I could leave you on the side of the road at any moment.”

Niall sighs. Jesus Christ, it’s like pulling teeth trying to suss out Harry’s deal. Most people have got to be content with it, people like Liam who shrug it off, seemingly just happy to have Harry around when he can. Doesn’t quite work that way for Niall.

He means it, he wants to cover all of Harry’s bases.

“It’s, um -- there aren’t any pictures of you on your website,” Niall says. “You’re not like secretly famous, are you?”

Harry laughs. “Nothing of the sort.”

“It’s just a weird thing to do, just decide one day to start driving across America.”

“Well, I wanted to learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road.”

Niall throws up a hand and it thumps down onto his guitar. The echo sits between them for a while until Niall mutters, “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you.”

Harry sighs, knocking his sunglasses askew to push a hand through his hair. “I’m just driving. It's about the passenger. You don't take a picture of the train conductor or the pilot or the bus driver. It's not up to me to be part of it. I'm just driving.”

Niall shakes his head. It’s not just that, it’s never just that. Nobody who’s just driving perfectly curates an experience like this. Nobody who’s just driving has a friend in every city in the country. Nobody who’s just driving could make Niall this comfortable, this curious, this plugged in.

The last three days have been something like a fever dream. If Niall didn’t have photos to back it up, he’s not actually sure anyone would really believe him.

“You're a lot more than that,” Niall says.

Harry looks over at him, his mouth perched open like he’s going to say something, but he never does. It’s a long few seconds before he can seem to return his eyes back to the road.

“I don’t even know your favorite color,” Niall adds. “Or city. Or what you wanted to be when you were growing up.”

“People are made up of more than facts.”

“But we can start with facts.”

“And then what?” Harry nearly sounds defensive with it.

Niall grins at him, for whatever it’s worth, because Harry’s not looking. “We dig deeper.”

Niall yanks and yanks at him until it flows easily. He knows Harry’s a talker, Harry’ll natter on about Big Mama Thornton and the history of rhythm and blues until he himself is blue in the face. He turns into a clown pulling an infinite string of fabric out of his mouth, stitched together with trivia.

He’s a storyteller, like Niall, meandering and incapable of being precise, to the point where Niall thinks he should be recording it for deeper analysis at a later date. He watches Harry fret through what should be simple questions like Stones or Beatles, tug at his hair as he tries to maneuver his way through chocolate or vanilla.

He goes silent for a while when Niall asks him why he does what he does. “It’s -- control. I dunno how to say that without sounding like a control freak, ha.”

“You said it, not me,” Niall jokes. But honestly he does think there’s something to that. He remembers, briefly, their conversation on happy accidents.

“It’s like. Okay, I’m sort of in control here, right? But I’m doing it for you. That’s what it’s about, doing this sort of stuff for you. I like that.” Harry peeks over at Niall like he needs permission to go on, so Niall nods him along. “I like knowing where I’m going. I like being the one that gets us there. 'Cos, like, I know you can’t control everything on the road. There’s bad weather and construction and other people accidentally trying to run you off the road. But you’ve got an itinerary. And a thousand places you’ve never been before.”

“I think I get it.” It’s not the easiest to follow this string of fabric, but Niall will unravel it further for sure. “Does it ever get exhausting?”

“What?”

“Doing things for other people. Like. Does anyone do anything for you?”

Harry considers that. “You took me to a post office.”

“That I did.” He hopes he’s not the only one to have done something like that. Harry happens to people, but he wants people to happen to Harry.

\--

The long day settles onto Harry after a wee break, and Niall’s reminded he got at least three more hours of sleep than Harry did on their drive to Houston. They’re edging closer to midnight, definitely the latest they’ve been out so far.

There’s some sort of magic on the road right now, this unnatural drive that seizes Niall, makes him want to keep going. He feels like that sometimes, when they go long enough without stopping, that when he’s stood still he’s meant to be moving forward.

But then he thinks maybe he’s always felt that way. Should be moving forward, but he’s standing still.

“I think maybe I should drive,” Niall says, after Harry finishes an impressively wide yawn just outside the rest stop toilets.

Harry looks scandalized. “Niall, no one drives this car but me.”

It’s about control, Niall remembers. But it should also be about doing something for Harry. If Harry’s open to it. “If you wanna get to Alpha Que Que tonight, you better hand me them keys.”

Harry straightens, curving his back so his stomach rounds out. Niall thinks he hears an ugly pop. “We could find somewhere to sleep tonight,” he offers, but he doesn’t sound totally convinced by it. It must be eating him, that he can’t get at Albuquerque tonight as he’s planned.

“Nah, I’m wired. Lemme do this for you, okay?” Niall holds his hand out, wiggles his fingers in an invitation.

Harry looks at him, his eyes narrowing until something appears to snap within him. “It’s Albuquerque,” Harry says as he surrenders his keys.

“That’s what I said.” Niall grins over at him until they start moving, taking each other’s seats in the car.

Niall’s never had a car before, but his brother did, and he’d pop a blood vessel if Niall ever messed with his stuff. Harry takes it in stride, doesn’t say anything. But he does watch Niall very closely as he starts to adjust Harry’s seat, yanking it forward because he hasn’t got those long legs.

He’s patient enough to let Harry talk him through listening to the satnav on his phone, even though they’ve been listening to it go this whole time. He nods his way earnestly through Harry’s abridged driver education, ducking out of the way of Harry’s swatting hand when Niall jokes, “Yellow means go faster, right?” Niall sits through all of that, mostly because he can’t believe Harry said yes.

“You’ve gotta keep me awake,” Niall says as he pulls the car back out onto the highway, Harry’s phone chirping instructions at him. “It’s in the rules, no sleeping.”

“I won’t sleep.” Harry sounds incredibly offended.

“Promise?”

Harry just stares at him.

“Passenger picks the music,” Niall prompts. He tosses Harry his phone.

“All right,” Harry grouses. “Sing along songs?”

“Obviously.”

Harry picks through Niall’s phone very carefully, with his tongue trapped between his teeth in very deliberate concentration. Niall feels a little like he’s on display, like he’s been cracked open for analysis. Maybe other people don’t feel that way, don’t feel like the music they keep is part of who they are.

Harry plugs the aux cable into the phone. It’s quiet for a moment, then the voices burst on, the rhythmic thrumming of the guitar pairing with the _I know there’s nothing to say_ that starts Rumours.

Niall was right -- there’s no way he was done with this day, not a chance he could have called it a night. He’d call it a product of the day, but it’s days of excitement that’s keeping him going. He knows it can’t always be like this, he can’t live in a permanent state of vacation -- though Harry seems to.

But whatever life is waiting for him in LA, that blood, sweat, and tears he’ll have to sacrifice to honor the gods of the city. That all can wait. It’s too much not to be present in the moment, to soak up every waking hour they’ve got together, cranking the music louder all the while.

Right around _Go Your Own Way_ they’re too big for just the car, can’t be contained.

“Roll the windows down, turn it up!” Harry hollers, drumming on his thighs, so Niall does.

He lets the music flow out of the car, into the night. This is how it’s meant to be, music’s meant to fill you up until you’re overflowing, until you’re immersed in it and you can’t escape, but that’s okay, because you don’t want to.

This is the kind of music Niall wants too. The kind that gets you tapping on a steering wheel. The kind that makes you roll down the windows and crank it up all the way until the people driving next to you hate you. The kind that pulls people together, singing the same thing, dancing the same dance, feeling the same way. The kind that pulls people together like the two of them are pulled together.

\--

The quiet hum of the ballad section of Harry’s playlist comes like a reprieve to match the slow stretches of nothing they find themselves in. Niall’s wired from hours of shouting songs and dancing best as he can in his seat, but he thinks he’s losing Harry slowly to the hum of their car on the highway, to the road stretching out endlessly before them.

Nothing quite prepares you for just how little Texas has for being as big as it is. Ireland’s got its fair share of country roads, but here there are just long stretches of nothing, dead grass and dead trees given way to winter. Sometimes their only company on the road is a couple dozen cows, hardly visible where they perch sleeping in their pastures.

Maybe there aren’t eight of him after all here, not if there’s a whole lot of nothing taking up all this space.

He thinks Harry’s down for the count, until Harry says, almost like he can tell Niall’s about to accuse him of sleeping, “It’s cool, like, that you’re moving to LA and all. I don’t know if I said that before, but I think it’s real fucking cool.”

“Cool, yeah. Fucking terrifying, also yeah.” Niall laughs, but it doesn’t feel very funny.

“Why d’you say that?”

“Just worried I’m gonna get all the way out there and have anything to say.” That’s the real thing. He’s got all these grandiose visions of the type of music he’ll make, and nothing to back it up with. The real artists, they’ve got stories, they’ve got lives. When they say things, it rings with truth.

“Is this about the eight Niall Horans thing?” Harry asks, like Niall is blindingly transparent. “Because if you’re asking me, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, more Niall Horans.”

Niall feels his cheeks pink at what he knows is a compliment, but he can’t take it that way. “It would for me.”

Harry hums. “I don’t think you’ve got nothing to say, Niall.”

Niall’s not entirely sure how Harry can just say things like that, when he doesn’t know, really. They’ve got three days to their name together, and Niall doesn’t think he’s said much of anything worth listening to. Nevermind how Harry seems to have endless questions for him, like he’s got an endless amount of curiosity about Niall. He never feels interesting when he’s talking Harry’s ear off.

“Dunno much of anything that’s really going on. I don’t want my songs to just ape other people’s emotions because I’ve not experienced anything. Not love, not heartbreak, not struggle, not really any of it. I’ve just sort of been. Going at it, waiting for something to happen to me.”

“We’ve all got our small tragedies, Niall,” Harry says around a yawn. “But you’re not supposed to want them.”

“Not trying to like. Glorify suffering or anything. It’s just. I dunno that I have anything to say. No stories to tell. Not even a happy accident. No breakups to make millions off of.”

Niall sighs and keeps his eyes focused on the road. Harry doesn’t say anything, he’s likely asleep, but it doesn’t stop Niall from admitting into the silence, “Just wanna make someone feel something.”

Authenticity. That’s what it is. Niall wants to be authentic. Like the greats, sure, but mostly like himself. That’s why you’re supposed to write stuff. To be unforgivingly and unrelentingly and unapologetically yourself.

“I don’t think there’s anyone quite like you, Niall. And I’ve met a fair few,” Harry says quietly after some time. “Meant to say that, back at Zilker Park. Nobody like you.”

Niall spares a glance over at him, though he’s trying his best not to take his eyes off the road, just so Harry won’t get nervous. But he’s gotta, sometimes, when Harry’s doing something or other that makes it impossible _not_ to look at him, Niall’s going to risk their lives every time just to glimpse it.

Harry’s eyes aren’t closed, they’re shining in the dark, fierce and passionate, intense in this way that Niall thinks Harry means it. That Harry’s on his side, even if there isn’t another person to stand beside him.

And it has Niall dangerously thinking maybe he doesn’t need anyone else but Harry there.

\--

 

**Day 4.**

Harry’s phone leads them to the Cream Puff Motel & Suites just after 5 am. The sun hasn’t even woken up yet, so it seems rude to wake Harry up. Around 2 am, Harry managed to fold himself into what looks like the single most uncomfortable position one could assume in the passenger seat, and has been dead to the world since.

Niall leaves a window barely cracked, because it’s a bit nippy out but safety first, and walks into the office. The lady at the front desk is nearly asleep, her head propped up by her fist digging into her cheek.

“Excuse me,” Niall says gently. “Reservation, uh, under Harry Styles?”

Her eyes fly open. “Absolutely, welcome, Mr. Styles.”

“Oh, no, I’m, uh -- Mr. Styles, Harry that is, he’s my.” Niall pauses. Driver sounds rich as shit for how little Niall’s going to end up paying him. And… Harry feels like more than that. “Friend. He’s still snoozing in the car, we drove all night. Sorry we’re late.”

“That’s all right, don’t you worry. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Niall. Horan. Niall Horan, if you need both bits.” He gives a self-deprecating shake of his head.

She chuckles. “Both bits, that’s so cute.” She types away at her computer thoughtfully for a while before she says, “You’re in luck, I’ve got your room from last night still ready. Seeing’s how you drove all night just to see us, we’ll just say you checked in later, get you a few hours on us.”

“Thanks very much.” He signs all the paperwork, lets her take copies of his identification, pockets the keys when she hands them over. Never checked into a hotel a day in his life, makes him feel like a proper adult. “What’s, uh, what’s your name?”

“Sharlene.”

“Nice to meet you, Sharlene.”

She puts her hand over the turquoise necklace resting on her chest. “My absolute pleasure, sweetheart. Please let me know if you need anything else.”

Niall nods after her before a thought occurs to him. He clarifies, repeats it back several times, just to be certain, before he goes back out to the car.

Harry’s still dead to the world, but thankfully not leaned against the door. Niall eases it open.

“Harry,” he whispers, his hand hovering in the air between them. He can’t decide where to put it -- his hand, his shoulder, his cheek, his hair.

“Mm?” Harry mumbles before Niall makes a decision.

“It’s pronounced alba-kirky.”

“What?”

“This city is called alba-kirky, you were wrong like four different ways.” This isn’t the hard way, it’s the easy way, and Niall’s getting out in front of it before Harry embarrasses himself in front of the good people of Albuquerque. He’s doing Harry a favor, in any case.

Harry doesn’t seem to take it that way, a scowl painting his face. “Good morning to you too.”

“Morning. I got our room, let’s go, yeah?”

Harry blinks slowly, slower than he normally blinks, and looks around, cluing into where he is. “We have to be in Flagstaff by six,” he says dumbly. “It’s six hours. We have to be there by six.”

“We can still do that, yeah? Let’s get you to sleep. I’m dead on my feet. Sleep until lunch, then we go, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry mumbles, rubbing an eye, looking every bit like a sleepy toddler Niall’s forced out of a car seat.

It’s a slow and steady walk over to their room, Niall clutching his bag, Harry’s bag, and Harry all at once in a feat of strength. Harry shuffles over to the bed immediately, leaning like he’s going to fall over on it dramatically. Niall honestly feels the same, but he’s at least going to be smart about it.

“Hang on, petal,” Niall says, stopping Harry by the hips. “Let’s get you outta this silky thing, yeah?”

Harry nods and lets Niall pop the buttons of his shirt, going easily through the smooth material, and slide it off his shoulders. Niall places it carefully on the bed, unearths his _I need my SPACE_ shirt from the pocket he saw Harry stuff it in last night, and fits him through it.

Harry’s silent throughout, Niall thinks, because he’s half asleep. But then Niall looks up, and Harry’s watching him, a serious look staining his face. It’s charged in a way Niall doesn’t think he can afford.

“Bed time,” Niall says, after clearing his throat.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees softly, then climbs into bed with his jeans and boots still on.

Niall putters around, trying to be responsible for a moment, carefully stowing his and Harry’s shirts, wrenching off shoes, but before long he passes out on top of his duvet as well.

\--

Niall checks out quickly, finds Harry pouring over the guest book. “About ready?”

“Just… about...” Harry bites at his lip as he starts to write. “M’hungry.”

“We can do that. Need a shirt too, right?”

“Hm?”

“Because you haven’t been to Albuquerque before. You collect them, don’t you? T-shirts for tourists.” He gestures at the _I need my SPACE_ shirt he’s still wearing _._ Harry wears the most absurd shirts to drive, button ups with impossible patterns, but he’s always got them tourist shirts on to sleep.

The pen stops in Harry’s hand and he looks up at Niall, his head tilted. “I -- yes, I do.”

He doesn’t know why Harry should look so surprised. Niall pays attention, he’s always paying attention. And he wants to do things for Harry. “C’mon then. Sharlene at the front desk says there’s a tourist trap next door.”

Harry nods, scribbles his finishing touch. Niall glances down.

_Albuquerque -- You were beautiful. You were brief. We gave you only our dreams. H. x_

Niall grins. Of course it’s something like that.  

“Bye, Niall, be good,” Sharlene calls as they’re headed out of the office, and that’s when Niall realizes he’s done a Harry.

He stumbles over his feet a little thinking so hard on it, wonders if Sharlene will remember him in a few days, weeks, months. If he’ll ever come back and she’ll greet him like an old friend even though he’s not done anything remarkable. If there’ll be the vague recollection your primary school teachers have when you see them again as an adult.

Can’t be, really, she’s got to see hundreds of people a week at the Cream Puff, no reason to keep her mind on the young lad with the odd accent who didn’t know how to pronounce Albuquerque.

The shop next door has a heavy scent of tobacco and old wood and Harry greets it with the enthusiasm Niall’s come to expect from him. Niall fucks around with a carved walking stick that makes him feel a bit like Gandalf, but he knows he’d rather just watch Harry, so he does.

They’re almost all of them Breaking Bad themed, the shirts. Harry settles on a Pollos Hermanos shirt, one that looks like it could be actual restaurant merchandise if he didn’t know what it really meant. He seems pleased with it, and that’s all Niall really wants for him anyway.

They settle in for a quick lunch at a place that’s self-proclaimed to have the best tapas in Albuquerque before quickly hitting the road.

“Hope you didn’t have anything cool planned for Albuquerque.”

“It was more of a way point. No offense,” Harry tells the air, as though the city of Albuquerque were going to awaken and take revenge against the slight on its honor.

“Off to the Grand Canyon, yeah?”

“No, thought of a better idea,” Harry says, sneaking a look over at him. “If you don’t mind.”

Niall’s not heartbroken over it, figures he’ll get there eventually. It wasn’t ever about seeing America anyway -- he could take or leave most of America. Now it’s just going with Harry where Harry thinks they should go. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

“I’d go anywhere with you too,” Harry says, pleased. “Music?”

Niall opens the music app on his phone, scrolls through his playlists until he stops on one called HARRY. It starts with Rumours and moves into everything else they’d listened to last night.

It feels good, having this little piece of Harry programmed into his life, some place Harry’s purposefully inserted himself into to keep. And it’s not a bad playlist either.

\--

The Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona are doing up a New Year’s Eve party and Niall startles. He hadn’t even realized it was New Years.

“Harry, it’s New Year’s,” Niall announces.

Harry looks amused. “I know.”

Niall had just assumed they were in some sort of journey untouched by time. The sun rises and sets, the stars working in counterpoint. He knows he’s slept and he’s woken. But it hits him, very very suddenly, that they’ll arrive in LA tomorrow.

Harry misreads the look on his face and grows concerned. “You’re not like. Over space stuff, right? S’a holiday, but I could try to find you like. A karaoke bar at least.”

“This is great,” Niall enthuses. He points over to the large building on the other side of the campus. “That is the fucking telescope they discovered Pluto with.”

Harry grins, looking relieved. “Are you sure you’re in the right field, Niall Horan?”

“Best of both worlds if I become some sort of space rock star.”

“That’s true.” He knocks into Niall’s side, then stays there all the way through their guided tour.

Harry looks otherworldly sometimes, glowing by the dim strings light festively hung throughout the campus. They cast shadows across the cut of his cheeks, the arch of his eyebrows, and he looks like something Niall would have only seen in his wildest dreams, something you’d only find in the far reaches of space.

Niall nearly asks, _would you let me discover you, study you, name you like a star_ , but he won’t. He’d gotten after that yesterday after all.

“Love your shirt,” says their tour guide as she’s waving them onto the lawn.

“Thanks, I just love space,” Harry says, which has Niall snorting, then turning it into a fake sneeze when Harry turns mutinous eyes on him.

Harry launches into some story about historic Mission Control and the Apollo Missions, and just like that, Niall’s become one of his stories without being a protagonist. That must be how Harry does it. He captures up everything he goes through with his fares, turns that into his stories. And this one’s Niall’s.

Niall finds them the best bit of grass to claim while Harry’s still making a friend, and prepares for the laser show.

“You left me,” Harry says, just moments after Niall’s sat down.

Niall looks up at him. “You were doing the Harry thing, didn’t want to get in your way.”

“What’s the Harry thing?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He pats at the grass next to him until Harry twists himself down onto the ground, rocking a little with the uncoordinated force of it.

In the sky above them, the green laser folds and shifts into constellation after constellation as the narration speaks of their myths. Harry chatters throughout, mentioning his favorite stars, which ones the things look more like willies than Greek heroes. Niall shifts in an unforgiving tug of war between amused and irritated before he gives up on listening altogether. It’s probably nothing he’s not heard before.

“Do you ever think of navigating by the night sky?”

Harry exhales, his lips flapping and making a hideous noise. “Google Maps has done me wrong more times than I’d care to admit. Perhaps I’d do better by the stars.”

“Unless it were cloudy.”

“Unless it were cloudy,” Harry agrees. “Do the stars look different here than they do in Ireland?”

Niall hums. “Stars are the same everywhere. We’re the ones who look different.”

You could blink and they’d be gone, the stars, but they’re always going to come back. The earth will rotate them back, certain in its path, looping with a comforting predictability. There’s just no telling where you’ll be when they return.

Niall would rotate back to any moment where he’d been stretched out on the grass, his guitar resting gently beside him, squinting up and wishing he’d had a telescope or anything else that’d bring him closer to the heavens.

He’d had a pair of plastic binoculars once as a kid, one he’d gotten from saving up cereal box labels that didn’t magnify much of anything, just warped the world like melted plastic. He didn’t want to warp the stars, didn’t want to warp the world unless he was going to be satisfied with the outcome.

He would rotate back to this moment too, stretched out on the grass with Harry, and stay still here for as long as he could.

“They’re dying so we can see their light,” Niall says, one of those things you’re not meant to admit out loud.

Harry matches him, eclipses him. “They’ve traveled millions of lightyears for the particular pleasure of shining down on you, Niall.”

Niall takes his eyes off the stars, the real ones and the green lasers pretending, and looks at Harry. He finds Harry already looking back, fierce and unrelenting, like the focus of his entire world in that moment is Niall.

Niall thinks, _I should kiss him_. But he doesn’t.

\--

“We should get champagne,” Niall suggests, in the mood to celebrate.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Or -- shit, you don’t drink.”

“Bit of champagne isn’t going to hurt. Ring in the New Year properly,” Harry answers, which is how they find themselves in and out of an off license with one of the few bottles left -- more than Niall would have paid, but Harry insists it’s his treat.

They finally make their way to the Red Sun Motel late enough that the receptionist’s face drops when she goes to check them in. “I’m sorry, darling, I expected you hours ago. All I’ve got left is a single queen. With the holiday.”

“We’ll take it, it’s fine, right?” Niall says when Harry doesn’t say a thing.

Harry keeps thinking and thinking on it, doesn’t seem to like the wrench in his plan. “Right, okay.”

“Promise I don’t kick or anything.”

Harry’s face breaks out of his frown into something cheeky. “I do.”

This is the first place that’s not made them lug all their shit up two flights of stairs. Niall clutches his free hand to his chest. “A lift. Splurging a bit tonight, aren’t we?”

“Only the best for you, Niall.”

They fall in line after a family of three, a mum with a kid in her arms and a kid whose face is buried in a phone.  

Harry crowds closer and closer to him, even though there’s more than enough room in the lift. He leans over, his lips brushing Niall’s ear, and Niall knows what’s coming, he’s lived this whole thing before, and Harry looks like he’s only got so many tricks.

Then the lift dings and the door opens and Harry shouts, “ _Run_ ,” before he shoots out of the lift, down the corridor. Niall shakes his head, is quick on his tail, doesn’t give a spare thought for what the family in the lift must think of them.

He keeps his guitar pressed closed to his chest, which admittedly slows his progress, but he’s got his priorities. And though Harry gets to the door first, he fumbles with the key enough in his hurry that Niall catches up.

Niall presses against him, pokes at him, gets right in his face, says, “C’mon, c’mon, Harry, open the door. Harry, unlock the door. Are you having trouble, Harry? Harry, do you need some help opening the door?”

“Niall, shut up.”

Niall slides in first, which means he wins. Niall sets his stuff on the floor and jumps up onto the bed, keeping his balance even though the bed shakes below him.

“I won!” Niall announces, just in case Harry’s not figured that out.

Harry just sighs, put upon, watches Niall with his hands on his hips.

“C’mere,” Niall insists.

“No, thank you.”

“We’re grownups now. And in complete control of our limbs, Harry, get the fuck onto this bed.”

Harry tilts his head back like it’s a great pain for him to even consider it, then he takes a running start and jumps clear onto the bed, nearly knocking Niall over when he doesn’t stick the landing.

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, honestly, he’s never jumped on a bed a day in his life, but maybe he’s a little pre-drunk, knowing they’ve got champagne waiting on them. Maybe it’s the day, the inevitable excitement that comes with the changing of the year, even if there’s nothing particular waiting for him on the other side of 2016.

Maybe it’s Harry, he thinks, just as Harry bellows, “No Rules 2016!”

“For whatever’s left of it,” Niall cheers.

“Happy fuckin’ New Year!”

Niall hollers in response, something satisfyingly guttural. It’s the end of the goddamn year and he’s been to space and seen the stars and sung his own songs to a crowded room and collected enough lyrics in his notebook to fuel a fire in his belly.

They don’t settle down until there’s a furious pounding on the wall from the room next to them, someone’s shouting too muffled to be understood, but they get the idea. Something in the vein of _shut the fuck up_.

They collapse onto the bed and into each other, looking and looking.

\--

The ball drops in New York too early. The TV’s playing it, showing couple after couple snogging each other while the redhead lady pesters the silver fox she’s paired with.

Niall switches the TV off. There’s nothing dropping in Flagstaff, Arizona, he doesn’t think. “What do you think the future’s like?”

“You should ask your cousin in Australia,” Harry says around the bottle of champagne in his mouth.

“Think I will,” Niall says, squirming until his phone’s out. He sends off a quick WhatsApp, then tosses the phone on the bed, doesn’t bother looking for an answer.  

“Shit,” Harry hisses. “I got some on the bed.”

“Give it.” Niall reaches for the bottle without waiting for Harry to pass it over. He rolls over to thump it onto the table and rolls back quickly so there’s no time lost between them.

Harry’s wiping the back of his palm across his mouth, swiping up the spilled champagne. They’re not drunk, but they are warm and soft and dangerously close.

Harry’s lips are pink and Niall watches them say, “Would you play me a song?”

“Yeah.”

He’s got Auld Lang Syne in his pocket from the one time he’s played a New Year’s Party, up on stage throughout, ducking a wet kiss from Bressie at midnight. He digs his guitar out, leaves his glasses be, and gives him a song. Harry tries to mumble along, but nobody quite knows the lyrics, even if they are in English.

Harry applauds politely and calls for an encore.  

Niall starts strumming, he’s not even sure if the chords are right, but it doesn’t matter, he just launches into the chorus with an _MMMbop da ba doo wop_ , which probably isn’t right either, laughs his way through whatever else of it he can remember.

Harry looks perfectly delighted. “You’re laughing, but this is the greatest day of my life.”

“Yeah? Better’n anything else I’ve ever played for you.”

Harry grins like he’s going to agree, but he doesn’t agree. “I have high hopes for your future work. You write your own stuff, right? Those songs in Austin, some of them were yours.”

He’s lazily picking now, nothing meant to impress, just keeping his fingers warm, a melody that’s been haunting him for a few days, but nothing solid yet. “Yeah.”

“That’s incredible.”

“It can be cool, when I find something I want to write about. Something that feels like it means something. Or at least makes me feel something. Something honest. Something that’s not just doing what everyone else is doing.” He’s said it before, he’s said it a hundred times over, and he doesn’t know why he can’t stop saying it. It’s like his mission statement, his mantra -- find something authentic, find a reason for doing this.

“You’ll find it,” Harry says firmly.

“Or them.” _I’ll find them_ , Niall thinks, but it’s not them, it’s Harry. He doesn’t bother stopping himself from saying the truth. “You’re the kind of person people write songs about.”

Harry happens to people. Harry’s happened to him, and he’d write a whole album about him if he could -- a song for each of his idiot tattoos, one for the pictures he takes, one for the way he can put a smile on someone’s face in five words or less, one for the way he shatters Niall’s concentration simply by standing next to him, one for the way he thinks there’s no one else in the world like Niall --

“Are you going to write a song about me?” Harry asks, quiet, nearly reverent.

“I think so.”

“What will it be about?”

“A wandering soul who makes a home wherever he goes, makes a family out of everyone he meets.” Niall’s fingers stop picking. “A force of nature. A happening. Inside of one person. One you wish for but never think you’ll get. Changes your whole life.”

Harry leans forward and kisses him, a sudden, dry press of his mouth that has Niall scrambling to let go of his guitar to get his hands on Harry. Because he knows -- just seconds before Harry does it -- that Harry’s going to pull back too soon.

Harry does, a frown staining his face, his mouth twisted open like he regrets it. That would kill Niall, in the blink of an eye.

“Don’t apologize,” Niall says quick enough that Harry can’t spill any of the words on the tip of his tongue. “Please don’t be sorry.”

Harry’s lips twitch like he’s trying out several responses, but he ends with, “Niall.”

“Wait.” Niall leans over the side of the bed, rests his guitar on the floor, and comes back to him.

“I’ve wanted,” Harry starts, and Niall just nods.

Harry’s meant to be in control, he’s led Niall every step of the way. But he looks helpless now, looking up at Niall like Niall’s supposed to have the answers. Niall knows what he wants them to be. His hand presses gently against Harry’s face, his intentions clear enough, and waits for Harry to nod.

Harry tastes like crisp champagne for only a few seconds.

They escalate together, building and building, each movement proposed by one matched by the other, heightened by the other, a natural crescendo. Stripping clothes and roaming hands and capturing lips. It’s everything Niall’s hoped for, come true in the stretch of a breath.

Harry doesn’t seem to be able to say anything but Niall’s name, like it’s the only word he knows, the only word he needs. Niall thinks he’s going to remember this the rest of his life, the way his name sounds coupled with a moan, the way his name sounds breathless as Niall learns Harry’s body with his fingers, with his lips.

At no point does it occur to Niall that this is a thing they probably shouldn’t do. There isn’t time to focus on that, not when Harry whispers in his ear he’s going to take Niall apart inch by inch. Not when four days of tension reaches its climax, now that they’re both finally, blissfully on the same page. Now that they know much they want each other.

It’s quiet after, just them and the hum of the aircon in the corner blowing air that doesn’t feel hot or cold and the occasional rhythmic pop of fireworks from outside. The sound still echoes through Niall’s ears like they aren’t just a memory. The strangled laugh Harry gives when Niall does something cheeky to him, the way Harry’s name is ripped from Niall’s throat when he comes by Harry’s hand. The sounds that are just for the two of them.

Niall feels weightless and weighed down at the same time. He could float away in satisfaction, if it weren’t for the firm press of Harry against his body, if it weren’t for sleep chasing after him to temper Niall’s expectations of being awake.

Surely it can’t always be like this, he can’t always have Harry’s lips pressed against his neck, can’t have every second of Harry’s attention focused at him and no one else in the world. It’s too much not to be a dream.

Harry keeps his head on Niall’s chest, eyes drifting like he’s slowly being rocked to sleep with the steady rise and fall as Niall breathes. Niall knows he’s awake, though, because he’s gently trailing a few of his fingers up and down, ruffling then smoothing over Niall’s chest hair. Harry can have every piece of him he can get his hands on.

Niall looks over at the clock. “Hey. It’s the future.”

“Yeah,” Harry says quietly. “How are you finding the future thus far?”

Niall tilts his head to press a kiss on top of Harry’s, the answer coming easily to him. “It’s perfect.”

\--

 

**Day 5.**

Niall wakes up expecting to plant a kiss on Harry first thing, but Harry’s not there. There’s a crushing moment Niall doesn’t understand where he’s absolutely convinced Harry’s left him behind, but then Harry exits the loo, already dressed for the day into one of his ridiculous shirts. This one’s got palm trees and old cars on it. It displays the bruise Niall’s left on his throat.

“Morning,” Niall says.

“Morning.”

He stands at the edge of the bed with his hands folded behind his back. He doesn’t come climbing in, he doesn’t round the corner to get in Niall’s face.

Niall nearly asks, _shouldn’t I kiss you_?

“Sleep well?” Harry asks, simple words somehow grinding in Niall’s ears.

“Yeah.” Niall nearly says, _you exhausted me, you and your mouth_. But it sounds wrong now.

He feels stupid getting out of bed naked when Harry’s dressed, but Harry’s not watching him, he’s fiddling with his bags unnecessarily. Niall grabs his phone and snatches the first bits of clean clothes he can from his bag and practically runs into the loo.

There’s a text from Louis that Niall had heard chime on the bedside table earlier this morning but had ignored, in favor of staying perfectly still for Harry in his arms.

_Happy new years lad. Liking those photos. Assume you haven’t been murdered ??_

_still alive , be there tonight .._ Niall shoots off and spends far more time hiding out in there than he should. He takes a long shower that washes off every trace of Harry on his body, brushes his teeth so every memory of Harry’s mouth against his is faded.

“Long trip ahead of us,” Harry says once they’re on the road. “Ten hours to LA if we loop around the Grand Canyon.” He looks uncertain over at Niall, doubting his own plans again.

“Sure,” Niall says, instead of _I’ll go anywhere with you._

He’d asked Harry not to apologize last night but he can’t ask Harry not to regret it this morning. Niall doesn’t know what he was expecting out of it, it’s basically a glorified hookup. But it’s the morning now, and Niall’s still paying him to drive him across the country and in ten hours or so, they’ll be done with each other. That’s what they’d signed up for.

“Can I be a mum for a moment?” Harry asks.

“Yeah?”

“What was your favorite part of the trip?”

Niall bites down on saying, _you are_. “We’ve not finished yet, give me about ten hours, yeah?”

“All right,” Harry says, but he sounds a little sad with it.

It turns his stomach, all these things he could say, would want to say, but won’t. Harry wasn’t supposed to be that way, he’s supposed to be the kind of person Niall could say anything to.

New year, new them. 2017 seems paler already, and it’s only been a few hours. Niall wishes they could go back.

\--

The Grand Canyon is impressive. In size, in depth, in terms of shaking Niall up and making him talk to Harry for the first time in hours. It has Niall thinking, _m_ _aybe I’m not as impressive as I think I am_. It has Niall thinking, _maybe that’s a good thing._

Christ, Harry’s doing his head in.

They stand next to each other, quietly, like they have done in the past, but this is different. Worse? It’s not a quiet comfort, it’s almost tense. Harry’s picked the perfect spot for them, of course he has, where they’re close enough to see everything there is to see, far enough that there’s no risk of falling over. Everything about this spot, like the rest of their trip, is frustratingly perfect.

“What do you do with us?” Niall asks.

“What?”

“You collect all of us. What do you do with us, once you’ve got us? You don’t tell anyone. Trying to get you to share all of your happenings is like pulling teeth, Harry.”

“Maybe they’re not my stories to tell,” Harry says, his voice defensive and his back curling to match it.

“Then tell yours.”

Harry blinks like he doesn’t understand. “Why?”

“Because I want to know you,” Niall says, like he’s been saying for days. “I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone, because that’s what you do when you’ve made a friend. Why do you do this, Harry? It’s not just 'cos you like to drive around.”

He wants something of Harry’s to keep, something that makes him different from the others. Something more than a playlist on his phone and an Instagram full of photos. Something that tells him what they’ve shared makes this more than a business transaction.

Harry runs a stressed hand through his hair. “It’s nothing to write a song over. It’s not dirty, it’s not tragic. It’s just -- it’s me, it’s what I need.”

“That’s okay,” Niall says.

Harry breathes in and out, slow and deliberate, like a preparation. When he talks, it’s meandering, unformed like it’s something he’s not taken the time to put into words before.

“My parents are divorced when I was young. Too young, really, to remember anything other than them being apart. And that was fine, like, you don’t need two parents to have a good childhood or anything, you could have any kind of parents you want. I did have the two of them, equally. They carted us back and forth, dad’s house, mum’s house, dad’s house, week to week, half a life here, half a life there.

“That was fine, I loved them both, I wanted to be with both of them. But the longer I had two homes, the less it felt like I had a home at all. Just a place to sleep one week, another place to sleep the other week, everything I owned came in pairs. I just got… used to it. That’s all I knew, really.

“I got this flat, tried to go to uni, but I was always in one place. I couldn’t -- I can’t be in one place. Makes me feel restless. Stagnant. So I wander. Not because my parents made me, but by my choice. I choose to migrate.”

He closes his eyes and Niall figures that’s the end of that. He gets it, the choice, it’s about control. But god if it doesn’t sound lonely.

“But LA is your home?” Niall asks. “Your license says LA, you’ve got a place there.”

“It’s my friend Ben’s house. It’s where I get mail.”

“So you don’t have a home?”

“I have one for right now. Everywhere I go, it’s a home for right now. It’s good.”

“Can’t go your whole life with just right now.”

Somebody should deserve to keep him, and he should keep somebody. It can’t be fulfilling, really, to live your whole with surface relationships. People you see once a year, if that, drifting back to you like a distant memory. People you know facts about, not people you’ve built meaning with. Because people are more than facts.

Harry opens his eyes and looks at him, some sort of storm brewing behind his eyes. “This is it for me, Niall. This is what I am. It’s not a shame.”

“I didn’t -- ” Niall starts, but Harry cuts him off.

“I’ll be in the car. Please take your time.”

Niall tries his best to stay out there, but it makes him feel small. Smaller than he did with the entire expanse of the universe at his fingertips in Houston. Maybe it’s because he’s alone.

He’s always so small in front of something insurmountable, something impossible to truly comprehend the entire scope of. But it’s easier if there’s someone standing beside you.

\--

It’s quiet the entire ride of LA, but only between them. The music shouts at them, at the highway, too loud to be heard over. Niall keeps his head buried in his notebook, scratching away at those lyrics that have been itching in the back of his mind for a while now, until he gets too nauseated to continue.

Niall presses his hands to his eyes, truly motion sick for the first time all week. He’s been too distracted to focus on it otherwise, too busy chatting at Harry or singing to the music. It’s never just been him and the road tripping him up.

Harry says, “There are ginger lozenges in the glove box,” and that’s all for about seven hours. Harry still holds restaurant doors open for him, Harry still tells him the best places to stop and snap a picture, Harry still tells him an abridged history of tectonic plates -- Harry is still Harry.

But Niall suspects this is what he’s like with the rest of them. Professional to the last of it. His lips curling around a light smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, lips that Niall’s had the particular pleasure of kissing a mere two dozen times.

The bubble pops the second they pull up to Louis’ flat, or whatever’s left of the bubble is gone. Harry hugs him on the pavement, somehow both warm and formal, like they don’t know the taste of each other’s skin.

Niall’s known him less than a week, but there’s always something about the simple devotion of all your waking hours to a single person that connects you, inextricably, until you feel like it’s been years instead of hours and you’re ready to make those hours into years.

It’s got no right to hurt, but it does when Harry says, “Best of luck, my friend.”

It makes Niall want to blanch. “Why did you do that last night?”

Harry looks at him for a long time, his keys jangling in his hand as he closes them into his fist. Niall thinks for a minute he’s going to run away. Niall almost wishes he does, because instead Harry says, “So you could have someone to write a breakup song about.”

“Fuck,” Niall breathes, like it’s punched out of him.

“You could write about the one that got away. Literally. Because I’m gonna drive away at the end of this. I’m taking someone back home to Colorado. She said she’s given up her dreams of being an actress and she wants to go home. I almost don’t want to take her, y’know, be part of her giving up on it all, but she seems a bit desperate,” Harry rambles, his face twisting like he’s trying to make light of it, but his words land too heavy, thick chunks of their architecture crumbling around them.

“Harry, just stop.”

Harry snaps his mouth shut and the debris settles.

“You’re an act of god,” Niall tells him, but he means Harry’s a natural fucking disaster.

Harry frowns, a deep crease forming between his brows that Niall feels guilty for putting there, despite everything. “I’m glad I could be a -- a force of nature for you, Niall, if that’s what you needed, but. I’m just a person. I just drive a car. Don’t make me into anything more than that. It’s cruel.”

“But you are,” Niall argues. Harry’s got no idea, he hasn’t got a clue.

Harry shakes his head. “You wanted something to happen, Niall. It did. This was a happening. At my expense. Next time, I’d encourage you to be the one to make it happen.”

“That’s fucked up, Harry. You like me.”

“I do,” Harry says. But he looks pained to admit it, and that’s what keeps Niall from moving for him, from pressing him up against his car and kissing him like they need it to survive.

“Then what are you doing?”

“I don’t know. You made me break every single one of my rules. I don’t know what to do anymore.” Maybe that’s what’s got him -- he’s not in control again.

“What rules?” Niall’s read the rules, he’s obeyed them all -- he’s played the music, he’s kept Harry entertained, he’s done it all. There’s nothing he hasn’t done. And more.

“You took me with you to Sun Studio, to everything. We broke the itinerary. You drove my car. I -- last night was -- ” Harry cuts off, sniffs that ugly sniff of his, but Niall thinks this time it’s to keep him from crying. “I have to leave you, Niall. That’s how this goes. That’s the rule.”

“It doesn't have to be.” If Harry’s scared, he doesn’t have any reason to be. He’d help Harry see that if he wanted to, he’ll keep fucking needling at him, but Harry -- Harry stands there, silent, his head ducked.

The _right nowness_ of it all, of the entire trip, hits him then. It’s the last day of summer camp and Harry’s being more pragmatic about it than Niall is. There’s no reason they should pretend otherwise.

Niall digs the envelope of tips out of his bag for Harry, offers to PayPal him the rest of it once he’s settled in. Harry shrugs like he isn’t concerned by it. But it’s important to Niall. He’s got to put them back where they were.

“I’ll, um, I’ll come to one of your gigs, next I’m in town.”

“Promise?” Niall asks, but there’s not much that’s kind about it.

Harry bites his lip.

“Thanks. For everything,” Niall says. “Christ, that sounds lame, but I mean it.”

Harry gathers him into another hug, his arms pressing strong and sure into Niall’s back, and it feels real. Niall nearly goes breathless with it, savors it even though he shouldn’t. But this is the last of them. This is it.

“Trust that you’re going to be enough for the rest of them,” Harry says into his ear. “You’re -- you’re enough for me. What you’ve been, what you are, what you’ll be. You’re always going to be worth knowing.”

“So are you.” Niall steps out of his embrace.

 _Don’t kiss him don’t kiss him don’t kiss him_ , Niall’s brain chants until he’s turning away from Harry. Harry doesn’t stop him. The first step is hard, the second is harder, but once he gets a rhythm going, he’s

 _What the fuck am I doing_ , he thinks frantically. Fear smacks into him like a wave, nearly bowling him over and dragging him down in the riptide. This is it. This is the start of the rest of his life.

He looks back, stupidly, sees Harry sitting in his car. He’s not doing anything, not moving to leave, just. Sitting there. Somehow managing to be a thousand miles away, even though he’s a few meters from Niall.

Niall turns from him and rings the buzzer. The trip is over.

\--

“Fred!” Louis shouts, but it doesn’t do much, the kid’s still screaming. “Nuisance.”

Louis doesn’t look alarmed, so Niall tries not to be alarmed. “Seems... upset.”

“He thinks it’s funny. Trust me. It’d be a different pitch if it were actual screaming.” He gestures at Niall, then the sofa.

Niall settles in, presses his beer close to his chest, and waits for Louis to settle down his baby-shaped alarm. The sofa’s nice, a fine reprieve to the stiff curve of Harry’s passenger seat, the stone slab of a few of those motel mattresses.

The longer Niall sits still, the more he thinks he should be speeding forward.

But this is going to be his life, speeding forward in a different way. For the next few weeks, for the next sort of forever. He’ll be kipping on Louis’ sofa until he can get a job then a flat then a gig then a string of gigs then an EP then a recording contract and then and then --

“You all right, lad?” Louis asks, rounds the sofa to come sit next to him. On top of him.

“I’m just. Tired. Long week.”

“D’you wanna tell me about it? Been all over, haven’t you.”

It feels wrong to draw back the curtain and invite him in, but Niall does it anyway. Not because he wants to share what he's seen and done, but maybe because he wants some sort of vindication.

He wants someone to look at what he and Harry had become and tell him it was something. That Harry needed a home, something to make his way back to. That Niall’s search for a new and true home in LA isn't the stuff of a kid’s impossible dream.

Niall’s never needed permission before, but he finds himself desperate for someone to tell him he's doing the right thing, he's done the right things. He’s not done something stupid _again_ , left everything he knew behind _again_ , to just fail at it _again_.

Not that he’d failed in Augusta, mostly because there wasn’t much to fail at anyway, since he was just sitting on his arse or serving drinks or trying to sneak out onto the green when no one would have minded. But the inaction in and of itself had been a failure, any moment he’d not been working toward the next thing, anything he’d done that hadn’t led to a moment _,_ a _happening_.

Niall’s near shaking at the end of it, his untouched beer’s left a circle of sweat on his thigh. He waits for Louis’ judgment.

Louis looks pensive as he tips back his own beer and swallows hard. “Sounds like you’re being a bit unreasonable there, mate.”

Niall startles. “What? No, I’m not.”

“I’m just saying you’ve known this bloke a week.”

“It felt like more than that.”

“Don’t care what it felt like, I’m saying what it is. Harry’s spoke his piece, but even then, it’s been a bloody week.”

He must not have said it right, he must not have covered all the bases. Anyone who’d understood, they’d have sided with Niall in a second. “You’ve never just like -- I dunno, connected with someone in the space of a breath, like, you _knew_ they were gonna be someone. Even if you didn’t know what that was.”

Louis looks at him sideways. “Yeah. Had me a kid. Feels a bit like that.”

That’s something accessible, that people understand, the instant love between parent and child, something deeper than obligation. But there’s no obligation to Harry, there’s just pure desire. To see him, to be next to him, to talk to him, to know him. He’d want Harry to fill up his days, in perfect complement to his music, because Harry’d fill up his music. The two of them together, they could fill albums.

“Harry was just. Something.” A happening. Even if he didn’t want to be one.

Harry didn’t want to be one, and Niall just pushed him. He pushed and pushed until Harry was clear out of his comfort zone. Harry’d lost control, surrendered it over to Niall with a smile on his face. Until Niall had led them so far off road that Harry had to steer them desperately back to the road they’re supposed to be on.

 _What the fuck have I done_.

Niall looks over at Louis. “I’ve made a right fool of myself, haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” Louis says frankly, which gets Niall laughing. Actually laughing, to the point where a bit of the pressure lifts off his chest.

“Cheers, mate.”

“You’re young, Neil. And the world will keep spinning with or without the two of you.”

“Yeah,” Niall says quietly, adds that he doesn’t quite want the world to keep spinning if the force of it’s going to send them in opposite directions.

“What’s next, lad?”

For the next hour, for the next week, for the next sort of forever. It starts with his guitar. “Got a song or two to write, don’t I.”

“Or seven. Or twenty. Or fifty.”

Niall hums. He’s at the divide again. His life before Harry, his life after Harry. He thinks maybe he should slide his phone out and apologize. _Sorry for trying to make you more than what you were_ , he could say. _I’d have you the way you are, if you’d let me_.

But then he thinks better of it. Even if he does feel worse about it.

\--

 

**After.**

He’s not headlining, he’s opening for the opener for the opener for the opener of the headliner, four songs to his name, but this is the biggest gig he’s had yet. And he’s buzzing in the green room, pacing a hole into the floor.

This is it, this is what he lives for.  

The picture of him on the wall is one Harry took of him at Austin, glasses on, his lips curved around the microphone like it’s giving him life.

Niall had almost left the email unread, the zip file unzipped, but then he couldn’t. He’s glad he didn’t. They get it, these pictures. They find some sort of way to capture what it feels like for Niall, what it’s about.

Louis won’t listen to tales of his _Gap Week_ anymore. But Niall’s over telling them. Mostly. He can’t frame his whole life around things Harry’d done, things Harry’d said. Because Harry was right about him.

He’s spent so much time trying to be earnest and genuine that he’d been faking it. He’d been hoping life would hand him stories to tell instead of making his own stories.

They tell him he's on, so he moves for his guitar case, battered and familiar and littered with the scars of the places he's been.  

Niall grabs his glasses from where they’re wrapped in a Priority Mail label, a pick from the little envelope he keeps them in.

 _What the fuck am I doing._ Niall turns and heads out for the stage. He’s performing, is what the fuck he’s doing, giving every single piece of himself to the audience until there’s nothing left over. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.

It's a good audience, even if they haven't come to see him or the person after him or the person after that. They're loose already, beer warm enough to have fun, not drunk enough to cause trouble. Niall likes them like this.

His levels are good, his songs are hitting that sweet spot in his range where everything’s coming out well enough not to embarrass himself. It's a good gig. Until halfway through the third song.

Niall misses a note, then three more, his fingers fumbling because there's green eyes watching him from a table just barely lit enough for Niall to clock them. Green eyes wide and attentive, not even wincing at the missed notes.

 _What the fuck is Harry doing_.

He hadn't promised. Not that Niall was really asking him to.

His cheeks are burning going into his last song. He thinks maybe he should pivot, but the fact of the matter is, he’s only got the four songs. And he’s done with covers. He’s not singing anyone else’s stories anymore.

 _You’re an act of god,_ Niall tells him. _You’re lightning in a bottle I’ve moved heaven and earth to catch._

Niall can’t help it, but he hears Harry every time, he hears Harry tell him he just drives a car. And maybe that’s so, for anyone else who’s not taken the time to see him.  

 _I’m hoping lightning will strike me twice_.

Harry’s eyes darken, he goes completely still, just watches Niall with an intensity that makes Niall feel like he’s the only person in the world as far as Harry’s concerned, the sun around which everything revolves. A couple of months back, Niall would have argued Harry was the sun.

 _Would you let me discover you, study you, name you like a star?_ Niall asks him before his eyes flick away. They don’t find their way back to Harry. He’s got a room to work, people to reach, to collect onto his side.  

_Where have I been? Where am I now? Where am I going?_

That’s the beauty of it -- none of them have to know Harry, none of them have to have sat in the car with them, breathed their air, listened to their music, gone to the places they’ve been. He can take a moment, a happening, and make it universal. He can make it anything and everything. It’s why he does what he does.

_Where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you going?_

He’s seen the lyrics in Harry’s eyes, he’s heard the melody in his voice. He’s taken it and he’s meant to have moved on. Harry wasn’t meant to keep his promise.

It’s taken Niall months and months to get his head out of his arse, to focus on what Harry’d told him to do, to find a way to be authentic without forcing it. To let life happen to him as it comes, to make life happen if he can.

He asks it a few more times, _where are you going, where are you going_ , _where have you gone_. His fingers find an easy, gentle tune that’s haunted him since December, fading into nothing, into applause.

“That’s been _Force of Nature,_ you’ve been an excellent audience, I’ve been Niall Horan. I hope you’ve enjoyed our time together. Thank you so much, have a good night.” He nods, deferential to the audience, catches a single glance at Harry sitting stock still as ever in his seat, looking like he’s had a happening.

With a wave he’s off the stage, into Louis’ waiting embrace, letting him slap at his back and shout, “Fucking smashed it,” right into his ear.

“Yeah,” Niall says absently, keeps himself from turning back desperately for a final glance at the audience before they’re down a corridor.

The next band are queueing up in the green room by the time they get back, jumping all over themselves with excitement, and Niall has to drag a smile onto his face. They trade well wishes and congratulations and then the door closes behind them.

“Great fucking show, lad,” Louis says, eyeing him. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, ‘course, thanks.” Niall shakes his head. It was amazing. Any opportunity he gets to do this, he’s too grateful to put it into words. But usually he tries to anyway.

“You all right? Look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I have,” Niall says, and then there’s a knock at the green door.

Louis swings it open, Niall’s breath catches. “Can I help you, mate?” Louis prompts, when nothing’s said.

“I’m looking for Niall,” Harry says, but he knows he’s found him. Because he’s looking past Louis, straight at Niall, with such intensity it’s nearly rude.

Louis looks at him for a moment, and then it clicks. Niall’s told Louis about him, in startlingly clear detail, but he’s never shown him the picture, the only picture of Harry he’s got. That belongs to Niall only.

Louis clocks him anyway. He looks back to Niall, the question in his face blurring with the anger. He’d shut the door in Harry’s face if Niall asked him to. Or maybe he’d march Harry right out of the bar.

Niall nods, and they trade places. Louis closes the door behind himself.

Harry’s eyes trail across the room, soaking in the table of water bottles, the battered old sofa, Niall’s open guitar case, Niall. He stands by the door and Niall doesn’t know how to invite him in.

“You wrote me a breakup song,” Harry says, at last.

There’s no use in denying it’s about Harry. “You asked me to.”

Harry nods slowly, slowly working his way further in on his own. “Good gig.”

Niall drifts closer to him, caught as always in his gravitational pull. “Biggest one yet.”

“I feel like I should have brought you flowers or something.”

Niall doesn’t expect that from him. He doesn’t expect anything. Harry’s stayed put, even if it’s just tonight. He’s not got somebody with him -- Christ, or Niall hope he doesn’t. Because Niall doesn’t want to be one of his stories.

He’s happy to be part of someone else’s life, just a blip in their narrative, a happy, fuzzy memory that could turn into something permanent one day -- remember when we saw that bloke Niall Horan? But Harry’s altogether different. He doesn’t hope Harry will be permanent, he’d need Harry to be.

 _Does the road miss you when you’re gone?_ he nearly asks, but what comes out is, “Where ya been?”

“Golden, Colorado. Which is outside Denver,” Harry says, for whatever it’s worth -- not much, Niall hasn’t a clue where Denver, Colorado is. “Moved east for a while, did St. Patrick’s Day in Boston.”

“Sounds cool,” Niall allows.

Harry shrugs. “Wanted to take you there. Wanted you to see it, the parade. Started looking up all these different things, celebrations all over the country, like, they dye the Chicago River green and all, and I thought maybe I’d take you next year. Only.”

When Harry doesn’t say anything for a while, Niall prompts him, to know it’s safe, to know he wants to hear anything Harry will tell him. “Yeah?”

“I didn’t think you’d say yes.” Harry sounds tortured by it.

Once upon a time, Niall’d told Harry he’d go anywhere with him. He’s not surprised to find out that’s still the case, if the lurch of his heart is any indication.

“I’ve missed you. And I don’t miss a whole hell of a lot,” Harry says. “I’ve never -- y’know, I’ve never felt homesick? Because there’s never been anything to be homesick for.”

Niall thinks of him out on the road, his homes just places to sleep in. He thinks of his address in LA, his home just a place to get mail in. Harry’d told him it wasn’t a shame, and Niall shifted himself to believe that. That if he didn’t want a home -- if he didn’t want Niall -- that was okay.

But then Harry says, “I’m homesick for you.” And it changes the whole world, quick as a flash of lightning.

“Me too,” Niall admits, even though it’s not really covering half of it. “And I haven’t even gone anywhere.”

Harry looks relieved, steps away and pulls his hands through his hair, like he needs a moment to pull Niall into himself and learn how to keep him. Niall will wait as long as it takes.

“I won’t stop this,” Harry says seriously, when he’s ready. “It’s my job, I love it.”

“And you’re fucking good at it.”

“Yeah.” Harry chuckles. “And I’m fucking good at it.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to,” Niall says, just as seriously. “Or implied or whatever. That wasn’t right.”

It’s not his place to tell Harry where to go or who to be or what to want. So long as they were on the same page, so long as they did right by each other.

“But I would come home to you,” Harry insists. “I’d take you anywhere you want to go, but I’d also come home to you.”

Niall loses his breath a moment, but recovers, aches to put his hand on Harry’s chest, because it’s open and vulnerable as ever under his unbuttoned shirt. But he doesn’t. Not yet.

“You did. I shouldn’t have tried to force anything, you’re -- I know you want to be in control of your own life, and I shouldn’t have been trying to keep you here if -- ” Niall doesn’t want to say _if you don’t want to be_. Because he couldn’t take hearing no again, even after he thought he’d sewn himself up. Because Harry’s still here anyway.

“Can I buy you a water?”

Harry blinks lazily at him, says like he’s unimpressed, “Aren’t those free?”

Niall quirks his eyebrows at him. “Cheap date.”

Harry breaks, grins for the first time, and it shines as bright as Niall remembers, just as bright as he likes. “I’d like that.”

Niall puts his hand to Harry’s lower back, gently guiding toward the door.

Harry’s eyes catch on the picture on the wall, the one that belongs to him, and he stops. “I told you not to make me into a force of nature.”

“It’s just a song -- ” Niall scrambles, but Harry cuts him off with a hesitant look, a hesitant question.

“D’you think, like, d’you think I’m like that?”

Niall gets it then. Harry’s not mad, he’s in awe. He’s got that look on his face the first time Niall called him that. The look he had on his face when he kissed Niall for the first time. “I -- yeah. I really do.”

“I think of you like that. But I was scared to.”

Niall thinks it’s a gorgeous thing to be thought of that way by Harry. Niall thinks he’d like to be more permanent than a storm that rages through the night and goes running when the sun rises again. Niall thinks Harry could go when the road calls to him, so long as he comes home to Niall in the end.

Niall thinks, _I should kiss him_. He does.

\----

  
  
****

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you need me, I'm [here](https://wickershire.tumblr.com/post/159116483043/title-lets-start-right-now-rating-teen).


End file.
